Forget Me Not
by roberre
Summary: "You cared for me," she says, slowly. The words sound strange on her tongue, because he didn't care for her and nobody cares for her because nobody knows her (because she doesn't know herself). The woman with no memories and no name attempts to repair the shattered fragments of her life, and Gold stays in Storybrooke.
1. Chapter 1

Part One: Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

Chapter One:

She hears "Belle?" called out in Doctor Whale's voice and nearly forgets to answer.

(Belle means nothing to her. Belle is a ringing, tinkling, gonging object – not a person. Not her.)

"Can I talk to you a moment?" he asks.

She bites her lip and pulls the thin blanket higher up her legs, wiping her palms on the soft cotton. Looking up, she finds she can't meet his eyes. Opening her mouth, she finds she can't speak. So she nods instead and stares at the whiteness of his coat.

His voice is soft, and quiet, and she's not sure if it's soothing or pitying (but right now she thinks either might be okay because there's been far too much screaming lately.) He takes one step forward. But only one, because her hands grip the blanket white-knuckled and her jaw tightens and he's an observant man. Three days of hospital life has given her time to study him, and the details of 'Doctor Whale' are uncluttered in her mind because her mind has nothing with which to clutter them.

"Belle," (jingle bells and cow bells and the resounding music of church bells from a great cathedral) "I want to be clear on something. You don't have to see anyone you don't want to, okay? Use this time to recover. The bills are taken care of, so take as long as you need."

She wants to leave. She wants to get as far away from here as she can, but _here_ is the only place she knows (although it's so much lighter and whiter and brighter than the dark empty cave she's inhabited for _such a long time_) and _here_ is the only place she might be safe. She was outside and she was shot, after all. A man was run over and she (apparently) forgot her memories and perhaps it's her own fault. She was outside and chaos reigned. "Okay," she says.

"It's your choice." She hears a caveat approaching with the inevitability of an out of control car. There's a long pause. "But Mister Gold has been asking to see you."

A jolt through her body like electricity, fear and anger and confusion. A knee-jerk reaction, her eyes flick up to Doctor Whale's and blue meets blue and she shakes her head. "No. I don't—" she very nearly flinches, "—I don't want that man here."

"You're sure?"

She nods, and it spills hair (dark and long and gently curled, matted and knotted and in need of a wash) in front of her face. "He needs to leave."

Whale nods. "Okay," he says. His lips press tightly together, nostrils slightly flared and eyebrows creased in thought, and he makes a move to the door. But then he stops, turns to face her. "Can I offer you a suggestion?"

It's a strange question.

For as long as she can remember (approximately seventy two hours), she's only been _told_. Ordered. Instructed. She's been force-fed details of her past, and force-fed tranquilizing medication when the walls closed in and she started to scream, force-fed the saccharine smiles and assurances that 'it will all be alright' and 'you just need to give it time'. (She's been healed and kissed and had a broken teacup shoved in her face.) Nobody's offered her a choice, until now.

"Okay," she tells him.

"May I sit down?"

A momentary hesitation. But he is kind to his patients (if not always to everyone else) and he has offered her a choice. "Okay."

"Thank you."

He pulls up a plastic chair from beside her bed and takes a seat, keeping a comfortable distance between them. She feels vulnerable. Exposed. Ratty and unkempt like a discarded doll. But he doesn't stare at her gown or her mussed hair. He merely offers a thin smile and folds his hands in his lap and says, "You will see him. Gold. Around town." She opens her mouth and he waits for an answer, but she has none to give. So he continues. "I know you don't want to—but it's an eventuality you're going to have to face sooner or later. All I'm trying to say is that it might be easier to face _here_, rather than out there."

_Here_, where it is safe and a single scream can bring a team of orderlies running in to push him away. Where there are no crowds and no guns and no cars and no fireballs dancing in open palms. (_Here_, where she belongs.)

She studies Whale's face for a long time, and he leaves his expression neutral. Gentle. Soft enough to avoid scaring her eyes away. "Do you know him?"

"We've worked together on occasion."

"Is he dangerous?"

"Sometimes." A small half-smile. A creased forehead. "But not to you."

She looks from Whale to the door of her room, remembering the mysterious grey-haired man who nearly broke apart when she asked him to leave. "That's not reassuring."

He laughed. She hadn't meant it as a joke, but his smile is wide and toothy. Despite herself, she feels her lips twitch.

"Maybe it shouldn't be," he says. "He's a strange man, Mister Gold… but I don't need to know him well to realize he'd do anything for you."

"Except leave me alone?"

Whale raised his eyebrows, conceding her point. "Do you want me to ask him to go, then?"

"I—" She should say yes. Her heart is beating and her palms are sweating and she knows if Mister Gold walks through the door the terror will flood into her with the heat of red-hot iron and the bite of icy handcuffs. And she knows she will break his heart and his agony will leave her feeling sick. And she knows she can't be who he wants her to be. (Can't be Belle. Belle is not her.) "I don't know."

"That's fine. That's perfectly fine, Belle."

She wrings her blanket between her hands and musters up the strength to speak the words forming on her tongue. "Ask me again tomorrow."

xxxx

It takes several 'tomorrows' before she has an answer for Mister Gold.

She hasn't gone out (though Ruby has offered to show her around town) because she knows he's there. In the lobby or in his shop (he owns a shop) or on the streets, he's waiting for her answer. Waiting for her. The very thought of it sends her legs all to jelly. But she has a suitcase of clothes now, and a stack of books she's been reading, and Doctor Whale is letting her stay as long as she needs because her room has been paid for (and there aren't many sick people in Storybrooke clambering to take her place).

And she's recovering.

Not her memories. Not 'Belle'. But in some ways, she's getting better.

She travels to the cafeteria for breakfast and coffee. Ruby brings over lunch most days; she has conversations with David and Mary Margaret; she takes walks with Emma (she feels safe enough to travel the gardens with the tall, silent woman who has a gun and an attitude strong enough to scare off any danger). She's spoken to Leroy, who brought her flowers and smuggled her in a hip-flask of bourbon (which is tucked into the bottom of her suitcase but calls to her like a siren when the nightmares hit), and to Archie Hopper, who is kind enough to come to the hospital whenever she needs him (and spent half their conversation thanking her for things she doesn't remember doing).

And she thinks she's ready to face Mister Gold.

She takes a shower. She combs her hair. She rummages through her suitcase and marvels once again at how many dresses and skirts this woman owned (and wonders how she could stand to wear them when they're so open and so like a shapeless hospital gown) and finally decides on a pair of black jeans and a massively oversized knitted sweater. It's not classy. It's not pretty. But it's warm… and she needs warmth.

She hides a pager in her hands, hides her hands inside the droopy sleeves, and walks to the cafeteria in a startlingly high pair of heels that give her the confidence she needs.

He's already there (waiting for her answer, like she knew he would be), but his eyes are locked onto a paper coffee cup from the vending machine and he doesn't see her come in.

There's still time to leave.

There's still time to run.

She can still escape.

But she has her sweater and her heels and the pager, and the angles of his back are weighed down and his bad leg sticks out from beside the tiny table, and she is getting better.

So she crosses the cafeteria with heels clacking against the tile floor. He hears her, and he looks up, and she meets his eyes. (They are brown. They are sad and much older than she expected.)

He stands, using the table to push himself up and giving a slight almost-hop to accommodate his leg. "Miss French."

It takes her a moment to reply, but she takes a breath and blinks and fights against the tension in her jaw and says, "Mister Gold, right?"

He nods. "Would you like to sit down?"

"Yes. Please."

He waits until she settles herself before sitting again. He takes a sip of his coffee. He's formal, in a business suit, with a business tone. "I suppose you're wondering why I'm here."

She feels as though she should straighten her back. Sit prim and proper and use her manners (and use her words to say something like "Yes, the thought did cross my mind" to show she has control over her own life). But she folds her arms across her body and stares at the table and nods instead.

"I came to apologize."

"For kissing me."

His brows twitch in an expression that looks almost like a wince. "Yes. And for other things, as well."

She waits, but he doesn't seem inclined to elaborate. "Okay," she says. She purses her lips and gives a tiny shrug. "I guess it's not really a great situation for any of us."

He spreads his hands out on the table, long-spider fingers with buffed nails and (tiny flecks of gold?) a turquoise ring. "I'm sorry for frightening you." A good start. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you when you asked me to leave." His hand clenches, unclenches, presses hard against the table until his knuckles turn white. He purses his lips and shakes his head. "I'm sorry for a good many things, Belle."

Perhaps if Belle was here, she'd forgive him.

"I never meant to hurt you," he says in a whisper.

"I know." But he did, nonetheless.

His eyes flick to her, and he straightens his back slightly and uses one of those tense clenching-unclenching hands to raise his cup to his lips and take a sip. She recognizes the action as a rallying point of courage. "I was afraid," he says.

It's not what she expects to hear. "Afraid of what?"

He sets the cup down, hand still curled around it, and scans the cafeteria. The lines around his mouth are tight, and his gaze flicks from table to table as if searching for predators. For the first time, she realizes that he's as uncomfortable as she is. That the crowds of people—to her, chattering and comforting and _real_— press in on him like asylum walls. Finally, he sighs. "I was afraid of losing you."

She drops her eyes to the table, unfolds her arms long enough to rub her sleeve against a stain. Not that she expects it to come off—and it doesn't—but it provides a moment's distraction. A moment to breathe and pretend that he isn't looking at her. A moment to rally her strength. She looks up.

"…I'm sorry I broke your cup."

All light disappears beneath the liquid-brown of his eyes, like a torch extinguished by mud. Exquisite pain stares back at her. "No no, don't apologize." He holds up a hand and presses his fingertips to his chest. "It was my fault."

"The hospital staff… they kept the pieces. If you want them." She scrubs at the stain again. "They're in a box somewhere. A storage room, I think."

"Why—"

"I asked them to." She leaves the stain alone and sets to rubbing her arms. Her whole body's gone cold. Her head aches. She feels dizzy and her heart beats fast and she finds herself rubbing her shoulder in the place _where_ _she was shot and where it bled until he crawled over and waved his hand and the pain was gone and-_

She's not crazy.

She's not crazy and he's not going to hurt her.

"I should go," he says, and she's glad—because if he'd waited a split second later, her nerves would have given out and she'd have run from the table without thought for appearances or her ridiculous high heels. He picks up his cane and drains the remainder of his coffee and heads towards the doors like a man pursued.

She watches him in silence.

Doctor Whale draws up behind her a moment later, worried eyes and gentle hands on her shoulder, and pries the pager out of her shaking hands.

* * *

**A/N: **First of all, thanks everyone for reading and reviewing. :) It means a lot to me. A special thanks to the guest/anonymous reviewers! I can't really reply to you guys individually, but I appreciate your feedback.

Secondly, THANK YOU AK (Anti-Kryptonite) for betaing this for me and cheering me on and being generally a lovely human being. You should all read her stuff and follower her on tumblr and send her Valentines day cards because she is a beautiful human being an a fantastic writer and a good friend. Another giant thanks to tardisinwonderland for helping me work through some of the rough spots of my plot. I appreciate it tons. (Read her stuff too. -nodnod-)

Thirdly, I hope you enjoy the rest of the story. :) It'll be broken up into three parts, with several chapters per part. I'll do my utmost to update once a week.


	2. Chapter 2

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

Chapter Two:

Storybrooke is a small, bright town with five sets of stoplights and one of everything else. One diner, one bar, one gas station, one hospital, one convenience store… and one library.

Like the rest of the town, the library is nothing fancy. It's an old building with a clock tower—boarded up windows and peeling brown paint and white double-doors. It's perched on an unassuming corner (across from Mister Gold's pawnshop, she notices, and she doesn't think she'll be moving back into the apartment any time soon) between two streets that never seem to carry any traffic. It needs a lot of work.

But it's hers.

Or it was. Or it is.

She's not quite sure.

It's hers because she looks like Belle and wears Belle's clothes and speaks with Belle's voice. But it's not hers because the doors are locked and nobody can find the key because only Belle knows where it is, and Belle is gone. And she has no idea how to run a library. (She doesn't even know if she's ever _been_ in a library.)

So the library sits on its unassuming corner and collects dust while she gradually familiarizes herself with everything else. While Ruby runs her through the menu at Granny's (pancakes and lasagna and iced tea and a promise of hamburgers that Ruby seems oddly reluctant to fulfill), and Snow and David invite her into their cramped apartment to watch movies, and Emma walks her around the town and glares daggers at anyone who crosses their path like they might be serial killers in disguise.

And every night, when she returns to the hospital, and slips past nurses into room 223 and wears pyjamas and leaves the lights on, she wishes she could be Belle just long enough to find the key. (And, sometimes, she wishes she could be Belle for longer than that, because Belle was brave and she is scared. Because Belle had friends while she only has strangers who love her for Belle's sake. Because Belle was happy, and she woke up to a car crash and a bullet in her arm.)

On the second week of remembrance, she leaves the hospital unaccompanied for the first time.

On the third week of remembrance, she finds herself standing in front of Mister Gold's shop.

The sign says 'open'. And she is wearing her tan skirt and her burgundy blouse (with the bullet hole hidden beneath a short black jacket), and it gives her confidence because these are the first clothes she remembers apart from a hospital gown, and she takes a breath and pushes the door open to the sound of a (_Belle_).

He stands behind the counter and looks up at the sound.

There is a moment where he does not move. He does not even breathe, she thinks (though it is hard to see because he's robed in a black suit and the light is dim). And then he smiles. "Miss French," he says, all hesitation gone. Gone and replaced with a practiced ease she does not think he truly feels. "What can I do for you?"

"I—" Her voice dies out, wedged in her throat and lost in the vast dark emptiness of her creeping fear, and she looks out the window to remind herself why she is here. Why she has come to him for help. Why she has subjected herself to the pain in his eyes for even a moment longer. "I was wondering if you can open the library."

"Ah, you're in luck," he says, and grabs his cane from a nearby corner. He rounds the counter and she moves to the side, nearly knocking globes and books and an unsightly bundle of odd yellow fleece to the floor in her effort to clear his path. He pulls a tiny wooden box from a glass-fronted cupboard and flips it open. He hooks his little finger into the box and lifts a key with a 'library' tag from its depths. "I happen to have a spare."

The key swings slowly, glittering in the dim light, flashing silver across the dark wood and his dark suit. She's never seen it before. She wants very much to hold it in her palm and put it in her pocket and run away.

"You gave me the library," she says. "Before." It's not a question.

A tiny flicker of _something_ glints in his eyes, a sudden flash like the light reflected off the key. It's not silver, and it's not bright, and it's more caution than hope. More numbness than feigned indifference, as if hope sneaks up on him and he can't quite stomp it down. "Yes," he says. "How did you know?" It's a very neutral question in a very neutral voice.

She gives a tiny shrug and rubs her hand over her shoulder (over the bullet hole hidden by her black jacket). "It's not hard to guess." He's the only one who would. Who could. The only one who owns a shop and drives a vintage Cadillac and wears business suits and walks with a gold cane and flashes gold-toothed smiles. And she's seen him talking to Doctor Whale in the lobby when they think nobody sees them. "You paid for my hospital room, too."

He nods. The flash of not-silver hope is gone from his eyes, though the key still hangs from his finger and shines. "Yes."

She narrows her eyes. "Why?"

"You're a smart woman," he says, and the corner of his mouth twists into a smirk or a grimace or something in between. He's bitter and rusty around the edges, like an old tin can, and for a moment the sharpness cuts through into his tone. "I'm sure you can figure it out."

She takes a deep breath, glances to the heavy wood of the front door, braces herself against the nearest cupboard. To remind herself of an escape, because she's not locked in and she's not a prisoner (any more) and nobody can keep her if she decides not to stay. She could pull the cabinet down, and he'd never be able to climb over it with his bad leg, and she could leave.

But she sees him soften, as if crumpling into himself. And she sees him look away, and wince when her fear is too obvious to ignore, and her heart twists.

"You cared for me," she says, slowly. The words sound strange on her tongue, because he didn't care for _her_ and nobody cares for _her_ because nobody knows _her_ (because she doesn't know herself).

His rusty edges drop away in a hush, sliding into an almost-whisper. "I still do, my dear."

It's not what she wants to hear, but she can see from his eyes and his hands and the softness of his voice that it's the truth. "And…" She twists her hands together, folds her arms across her chest. Looks down at the floor and bites her lip. "And did I care for you?"

"I don't suppose it matters much anymore, does it?"

She looks up and offers him a small smile, and she knows it's poor consolation for everything he's lost. But it's all the comfort she can give. "Not much, maybe. But it still matters."

Because then he's not just some creepy old man who's (as Ruby would say) "hitting on her". If they had an actual relationship… if there was enough good in him for her to see… then maybe he isn't the monster everyone seems to think. Maybe he is just a man, even if he can hold fireballs in his hand. Maybe she doesn't need to be afraid of him.

He steps forward and presses the key into her hand so suddenly that she almost drops it. "Here," he says. "It works for the front door and the apartment, though you might want to change the locks in case someone comes across the missing set." He turns and limps back to his counter. Picks up a cloth and begins polishing a gold-and-jewel encrusted egg.

"What do I owe you? For the rent."

The cloth buffs the egg with near-frenetic rapidity. "Nothing."

"Why?"

He doesn't' look up. "Gifts don't come with a price."

A pause. Breathing in the stillness, while Gold hides behind his counter like he's afraid of her (and not the other way around). She closes her fingers tightly over the key, edges biting into her palm but real and solid and full of indescribable _potential_, and turns to the door. She pushes it open and the (_Belle_) rings again and Gold's voice calls out,

"Miss French. Wait."

She stops. Turns around, with the door still ajar and the wind blowing around her ankles.

His palms are braced against the counter, cloth still in his hand, and his posture is too-stiff. Trying too hard to be tall and stern and not cracked (like she knows he is, because brokenness is the easiest thing in the world to recognize because it's all she's ever known). "I was wondering…"

"Yes?" she asks, because if he takes much longer to say it, she'll leave. She doesn't trust her feet to stay in place.

He looks suddenly very nervous, those sad brown eyes staring down at his shoes, fingers tight against the counter. "Have you ever had a hamburger?"

She wracks her memory (her non memory, the blank slate of time and terror of being locked up and the fireball and her shoulder, miraculously healed) and finds nothing. Nothing but a vague concept with no form, of some sort of food she'd never tasted. "I haven't."

"Perhaps… when you feel you're ready… we could have one."

"Together." She means it like a question but her tone is flat and it's a leaden concept on her tongue. (Together means 'with him' and she can't quite understand what he means by hamburgers together 'with him'.)

"I'd understand if you didn't want to, of course, but I hear—" He stops, and his his words break even if the rest of him doesn't, and it takes him a moment to continue. When he starts again, his voice barely travels the length of his stop. "I hear Granny's makes a great one."

She doesn't say anything. Neither does he.

She shrugs.

He nods. It cuts him to the heart, and she feels ashamed that she is the cause of so much pain, but he has to understand. "Of course," he says, and his fingers close over the cloth, adjusting it and refolding it. "Of course."

She stands there for a long moment with the wind pushing her skirt against the back of her legs, but she wants to leave.

But his eyes (his eyes are brown and sad and old and for some reason this makes all the difference in the world) ache. They ache and so _she _aches, down to the very bone. So she shrugs again.

"Okay."

His head snaps up like the sound of a gunshot.

"I'll tell you," she says, and she pushes the door open a little further. "When I'm ready. I'll tell you."

He smiles a watery smile that nearly drowns her and she's glad the wind is blowing against her legs and the door is open because he seems to push the oxygen from the room. His smile is saying 'thank you' louder than she can tolerate. His smile is saying 'thank you' and she's given him nothing but false hope and a lunch date.

"You should find my number in your phone," he says, (once he's reigned in his smile and tucked it away behind a straight face and shining eyes).

"Under 'Mister Gold'?"

He smirks and his head tilts. He lifts a palm from the counter and splays his fingers and twists it at the wrists in a restrained-but-evident flourish. It seems uncharacteristic, a little jaunty for the sober older man with the greying hair and the business suit. He says, "Maybe, dearie." It's not a demeaning term. "And maybe not."

When she leaves, key in hand and library ahead, there's an almost-wink in his eyes. And if his tears are still there, she can't see them, because they're hidden deep and dark behind something that looks a little like hope.

* * *

**A/N: **Oh my gosh, guys! I'm totally floored by your response to the first chapter! Thank you so much. I'm totally flattered. Anyway, I hope you enjoy chapter two (and the rest of the story) as much as you seemed to enjoy the first chapter. :)

Special thanks to Anti-Kryptonite for an excellent beta job, as always, and for being my sounding-board, a listening ear to all my whining, and a good friend.

Thanks to everyone else for the faves/likes/follows/reviews. And to those who reviewed, I WILL send you a review reply. I'm just... really slow. And busy. And I suck. So I apologize for the delay. xD Thanks again!


	3. Chapter 3

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

Chapter Three:

"It says 'Rumple'," she says, when she sits down at the table across from him. "In my phone."

She doesn't say 'hello', because she needs answers more than she needs the awkward settled silence of polite conversation, because her hands are shaking and her mouth is dry and her curiosity (about his name) is the only thing keeping her from running to the bathroom and losing her breakfast. (It may be a very short lunch date.)

If he's surprised by her sudden appearance, by her lack of tact, he doesn't show it. He simply folds his hands on the vinyl tabletop and says, "Yes. I suppose it would."

"Why?"

"Belle was rather fond of the name."

He doesn't want to tell her, but she needs to know because she's been wondering for two weeks. Because her mind is pitted with holes she can never fill, and this is one of the few questions that might have an answer. Because Mister Gold needs a name as desperately as she needs a name. (Because monsters don't have names, and people do.)

She is wearing her tan skirt again. This time, with a light blue blouse and a yellow cardigan. And her hair is pulled back from her face, and her cellphone with the name 'Rumple' is in her pocket, and she has courage because she wouldn't be sitting here if she wasn't ready to face him. And she needs to know the answer. She needs to solve this one tiny corner of her mysterious, irrecoverable life.

So she folds her hands on the table, just like he does (though far away from touching, far on the other side of the tiny table with her elbows tucked against her ribs and her hands barely balanced on the edge). She folds her hands and narrows her eyes and stares at his violet pocket-square because she can't look him in the face today and asks, "Is it short for something?"

The silence pounds at her ears—fists against a door, the drumbeats of battle sounding a retreat back to the hospital, where the last bastion of her sanity stands guard behind a barricade of books, and no-one can visit her unless she gives them permission, and she is safe and she is calm _and she is trapped_ and nothing bad will ever happen.

The silence pounds and her mind screams and Mister Gold says, "Rumplestiltskin" in a voice that is barely a whisper.

And everything goes silent. She can hear him shift on the chair. She can hear her own breathing.

"Rumplestiltskin?" she says.

He flinches. The sound of the name is a bullet, aimed at his pocket-square and shot into his heart. (She sounds like Belle.) She flicks her gaze to his face, and he stares at the table with his mouth pressed into a tight line. "Yes," he says.

She's read Grimm's Fairy Tales. Five weeks with no job and no life (surrounded by hospital staff and the considerate gestures of another woman's friends) have given her a lot of time for books. She's read Grimm's Fairy Tales and the man who sits before her is not Rumplestiltskin because Rumplestiltskin is a diminutive strange creature who dances around fires and rips himself in half when he doesn't get his way. The man who sits before her is calm and sedate and his eyes are sad and old and brown. So she smiles, like it's a joke (and maybe it is and maybe it isn't and maybe his parents really were cruel enough to name him 'Rumplestiltskin') and asks, very quietly, "Are you planning on stealing babies from the locals?"

There is a small smile on her face, and it must be contagious (like yawns and terrors and the common cold) because his lips twist up and he looks at her with a curious expression. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Miss French," he says. "But I gave that up several months ago."

She finds it funny.

And it startles her.

The sudden laughter (foreign on her tongue and loud in her ears and _not altogether unhappy_) seems to bubble up uninvited, from a place somewhere beneath her sternum, a relaxed and clever and teasing place she didn't know still existed. A place where her smile is warm the sun is shining and the man who sits before her (the not-Rumplestiltskin) smiles back without hesitation. (In truth, he does smile back. But the warmth fades because his eyes are still sad in this bleak grey reality, and the sun disappears behind a cloud and she realizes that jokes about stolen infants are neither humorous nor acceptable.)

Her smile fades, dropping away like the guilty smirk of a misbehaving child, and she rubs her finger along the edge of the tabletop. "Sorry," she says, staring down at her hands (dry from the cold air and the sterile surfaces of over-cleaned hospital furniture, soft and delicate because she was never a labourer, rounded nails and ink-stains on her fingers).

"You don't need to be," he says. "It's good to see you smile. Even at the expense of abducted children."

She's so nervous her hands are shaking but she smiles nonetheless because smiling is better than tears.

They fall into silence. Ruby comes by and she makes sure everything's okay and Mister Gold orders coffee and Ruby brings her an iced tea without asking. And it's supposed to be a hamburger date, but he doesn't press and she doesn't mention it, and Ruby leaves to attend to other customers.

"Thank you for coming, Miss French," he says. It's a stab in the dark, she thinks. A desperate attempt to reel her back into conversation, to distract her and occupy her and get her talking instead of sitting and staring at nothing and playing with the straw of her iced tea.

It works.

"Why do you call me that?" she asks.

"Call you what?"

"Miss French."

He offers nothing but a sad, sardonic smile. It looks like a scar across his face. "It's your name."

She pulls her glass closer, wraps her hands around the cool glass, rubs away droplets of condensation with her thumb. "Everyone else calls me Belle. Why don't you?"

He overturns one hand on the table, palm-up, as if offering her something more than a simple answer. As if the truth is a gift and the truth is heavy, and he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. "It helps me forget."

It's so ironic and so terribly fitting. Like snake venom, perhaps the cure is a healthy dose of the same, of amnesia injected intravenously or swallowed down like a pill.

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes."

Perhaps forgetting is easier than waiting on her to remember. (Because maybe she will and maybe won't and maybe Miss French or 'hey you' or _Not-Belle_ is all that's left. Maybe Mister Gold's broken, cracking voice on the road was right and what is done cannot be undone. And maybe there is no way back.)

"Does it bother you?" he asks.

"I don't know. It just sounds… cold." She stirs her iced tea, jostling ice cubes. "It doesn't sound like a _name_. It doesn't sound like me."

"What should I call you, then?"

"Jane Doe?" It's an almost-joke and they almost-laugh. Lips twitch and eyes soften and she guzzles half her tea in the time it takes him to pour sugar into his coffee and stir it with a clinking teaspoon.

"Jane, perhaps. But not Jane Doe," he says, and he takes a sip of coffee before expanding on his thoughts. "I should think you're more of a Jane Eyre."

She's read the book three times already. He's likely spotted her with it tucked under her arm, in Granny's or the hospital cafeteria—or maybe he just _remembers_ and it was her favourite book _before_. But he must not have read it himself, because if he had, he'd know she's no Jane Eyre. Because Jane is strong and brave and independent and smart (like Belle), whereas _she_ is afraid and lost and only defined by who she is not.

But she smiles, and doesn't correct him. "I suppose that makes you Mister Rochester?"

"No, my dear." He smiles softly and places his hand on his chest, nodding with deliberate slowness. "I'm Mister Gold. I believe we've met before."

It's more than an almost-joke—it's a _deliberate_ joke, and she finds the idea of Mister Gold joking as incredulous as the words themselves. Only, nothing seems very funny anymore. (Only hollow.) Her amusement is tinged with equal measures of panic and she hides it behind her iced-tea, stares at him from behind a shy smile and beneath dark eyelashes. And he smiles back.

Sometimes, like now, he looks at her like she's beautiful. Like she's lovely and kind and generous. Calls her Miss French like it's a secret between them—like they both _know_ her real name but keep it hidden from everyone else.

Sometimes he looks at her like she's a stranger.

And she's not sure what's worse.

"Tell me about her," she says. It's a leap of faith, a swan-dive off a high cliff. She's falling and it feels like she's left her stomach behind.

He hides his surprise well, but he shifts his gaze down to his coffee and takes a long sip before he speaks. (Looks back up at her as a stranger.) "What do you want to know?"

"Anything."

And so he tells her. Tentatively, at first, with precise words and carefully structured sentences. Halting. A whole life broken up into digestible fragments and carefully edited. He's not saying everything, but he's saying enough.

She's tired of people hiding things from her, coddling her and redirecting her interest and tiptoeing around her as if she might break at any moment (and maybe she will). But if she breaks, she wants to break with memories, (even if they are foreign and implanted and stories woven about another woman's life). Anything is better than emptiness. Anything is better than an eternity (twenty-eight years but surely that's biologically impossible because she can't be more than thirty now) in an asylum without a single story in her head.

He tells her Belle was kind. Belle was gentle. Belle was strong. Belle was loyal and determined (his words say determined but she hears 'stubborn') and passionate. Belle was intelligent and beautiful and so very _unexpected_.

She was patient. She was forgiving. She was loving. (She was better than he deserved, and he doesn't say this either, but she hears it nonetheless.)

"You're very brave," he says.

He's slipped up before. Mister Gold is more deliberate than others. More thoughtful in his word choices. But every so often he falls into the familiar pattern of telling her who she _is_ and what she _does_ and what she _likes_, as if 'You are kind' is a reasonable substitute for self-discovery and years of forgotten memories. As if she doesn't need to discover these things on her own. (Maybe she is kind. Maybe that's true. And maybe it's not.)

So far, he's corrected himself when he says she _is_ forgiving and she _is_ patient and she hasn't needed to interrupt. Until now.

"You did it again."

"Did what?"

"You said I'm brave," she says.

"I did," he says.

"You mean I _was_ brave."

He shakes his head. Grows very quiet. "I mean you _are_ brave, Miss French."

Her hands grow cold and her stomach clenches and it's a good thing they haven't ordered hamburgers because the smells of the diner make her long for the sterile-chemical-nothingness of her hospital room. She's not brave. Something's wrong, and she's not brave, she's afraid (because he looks at her like he knows everything about her, and she's finally decided it's worse. It's worse than being a stranger to him.)

She can't sit here a moment longer. Not when he's staring at her like she's his air, his sun, like she _is_ instead of _was_.

She grabs her bag off the back of her seat, a small black purse with a book and a tube of lipstick and a handful of crumpled dollar bills. She places the money on the table without counting it, and stands.

"I'm sorry," he says, hand outstretched. (He's broken— and she's broken enough without feeling responsible for shattering him too.) "Belle, I'm sorry." (It's all he ever seems to say.)

Her brows crease and she purses her lips and stares down at him. Greying hair and lined face. Business suit and an outstretched hand. Polished shoes and a crooked leg.

"I'm sorry too."

And she (Miss French or 'hey you' or Jane, a shell of a woman no life and no memories and a name that isn't even hers) means every word of her apology, even as she slings her purse over her shoulder and leaves Granny's without saying goodbye. Because maybe she loved this man once. But that person (Belle, someone real and bright and sunny and wonderful enough to wipe tears from sad brown eyes) is gone.

And who knows if she'll ever come back.

* * *

**A/N:** I did a round of review replies the other day, so please let me know if I missed anyone! Thanks so much for the lovely comments. They really brighten my day and keep me inspired. I really appreciate all your kind words and compliments and encouragements. You guys are awesome. Thanks for being a part of this journey with me.

Also, thanks to AK. Who is awesome. She's like my muse, only less fickle and more inclined to fangirl with me over Rumbelle. Thanks, darling! -Flag Waving of Appreciation-


	4. Chapter 4

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

Chapter Four:

She goes by Jane now, though half the town forgets.

It doesn't fit her. She doesn't feel like _Jane_ any more than she feels like _Belle_. She doesn't remember to answer when people call the name from across the room, and she needs to remember that _she is Jane_ and not just… she. But it hardly bothers her anymore. (One name represents who she used to be, and the other represents who she wants to be—and the more she learns of Belle, the more she thinks that perhaps the two aren't so very different after all.)

Boredom bothers her.

Patronization bothers her.

Curiosity bothers her (and so do people who evade her questions and act as if she's too stupid to notice the bizarre flavour of the town, who treat her like she's… crazy… for wondering where the mayor is or why she saw the sheriff walking down the street with a sword or why the whispered name of _Cora_ seems to send the population of Storybrooke into a collective fit.)

And so she spends her days at the library instead of the hospital—working instead of just reading. Organizing and learning how to use a computer database (and that takes a week on its own). She reads a book on fixing books, and carts volumes back to the hospital to fix cracked spines and torn pages. She locates the cleaning supplies and asks Emma if the job is still open (and what the salary is, because she intends on paying for her own hospital room and, eventually, for the apartment. Whether Mister Gold wants her to or not.)

This is her life. She'll make her own way.

Doctor Whale thinks it's healthy. He waves to her when she leaves and checks up on her when she comes home. Sometimes he brings her a new book to read from his personal collection, or a coffee, or a handful of pills and a bottle of water when the memories of the asylum grow too strong to ignore and she spends the night rocking in the corner. Sometimes he brings Archie Hopper in to talk to her the next morning, and sometimes he sits in the chair beside her bed and listens to her fragmented fears until his pager goes off.

She has good days and she has bad days—but slowly, ever so slowly like the creeping November frost or the first thaw of spring, the good outnumber the bad.

xxxx

She finds herself at Leroy's tiny house at ten o'clock at night, standing at the front door with the hip-flask of bourbon in her hand and a hundred questions and a hundred fears bubbling together in her mind.

It has been a bad day.

She was late for work (because yesterday was a bad day too and the medication makes her sleep), and when she walked into the lobby, _he _was there. The man who shot her. The pirate. She felt confident and smart and brave, in a pair of red heels with a fantastic grey skirt and a blue silk blouse, and he saw her and her knees turned to jelly and she nearly screamed. She felt confident and smart and brave, and he looked at her like she was nothing. Like she was a deer and he was the hunter. (Jane Doe after all.) Like he would gladly shoot her again and again.

Like they were at war, and somehow he'd already won.

She doesn't remember much else except Emma apologizing and David dragging him away into a squad car, and Doctor Whale lowering her gently into a chair beside the coffee machine. (And Mister Gold in the corner of the lobby, hands folded on his cane and watching her like a gargoyle, like a stone angel in a graveyard, like her own personal spectre of vengeance).

She hasn't left her room until now, and only because she's not quite desperate enough to drink alone.

She swallows and clears her throat and takes a breath and tightens her hand over the silver flask. She looks up at the porch-light, and up at the stars, and reminds herself that she is free. And then she knocks.

Leroy opens the door a moment later, grey sweatpants and a loose black t-shirt and no hat (his bald head gleams in dim light). His mouth is set in a scowl, but his eyes unclench when he recognizes her. He holds a television remote in his hand and peers into the darkness behind her, as if to check that she's not followed. (Perhaps by _Cora._) "A bit late for a social call, don't you think?"

She holds up the bourbon with a shaking hand. "I thought maybe we could share?"

His frown unfolds into a smile (albeit, not much of a smile), and he steps barefoot onto the porch to give her room.

She steps inside, swathed in a loose sweater and jeans and flats because she could barely crawl out of her pyjamas, let alone make herself presentable. He shuts the door behind her.

"Rough night, huh?"

She nods.

He follows the hallway, past the small living room where the television blares, to the kitchen. He has a bar counter (and she's not surprised). He pulls out a couple of short squat glasses from a cupboard. She stares at the glasses, and he stares at her, and he tosses the remote onto the counter.

"Do you wanna talk about it, or should we get straight down to business?" He nods towards the glasses. She doesn't answer, but he understands her well enough when she holds out the hip flask and takes a seat on the nearest stool.

He divides the amber liquid between the two glasses without spilling a drop. His hands are rock steady. She's not even sure if she can get the cup to her mouth.

"It'll look better in the morning." He rounds the counter and pulls up a stool beside her. Her glass rasps against the linoleum countertop and she thanks him without shifting her eyes from the faux-marble pattern. "Or after three or four glasses of this, whatever comes first."

He's not joking. And though she has no intention of spending the night curled over a toilet and sobbing (Ruby warned her about overdrinking when they spent the night at the White Rabbit a few weeks ago, and she does enough sobbing while sober as it is), his words are comforting. It's nice to know he's on her side. It's nice to know he has faith in her, even if he doesn't bring her lunch like Ruby or bring her books like Doctor Whale. They sit a while in silence, to the sound of the furnace rumbling in the background and the tv still chattering away in the other room and the clink of his cup when he rests it on the counter. (She wonders how they met, the librarian and the town drunk. She doesn't think it matters.)

"That was a bad call," he says, after he's finished half his drink and she still hasn't taken a sip.

"What- what was? Coming here?"

"Naw. They should'a told you they were moving him. Doesn't matter if you were supposed to be out. You deserve to know." His voice sounds gritty, like sand on pavement, and his scowl matches his tone.

She hasn't told him about the pirate—she hasn't told him anything, actually, because her mouth isn't working and the thoughts in her mind are too jumbled to properly sort through—but news spreads quickly in this town.

"What you don't know don't hurt you? That's a load of garbage if I ever heard it." He takes another sip and keeps talking without looking at her. "What you don't know can hurt you the most. It can sneak up on you."

(What you don't know can leave you an empty shell of a person with nothing but nightmares and false hopes to fill the void.)

She finds her voice because he's not looking at her and he's not touching her and he doesn't expect anything. Doesn't treat her like a child or a mental patient or his best friend or his lost love. He _is_ and she _is_ and they drink. And so she asks, "Where are they taking him?" and her voice sounds stronger than she expects.

"It's supposed to be some sort of big secret. My guess is they'll shuffle him around for a few days to throw everyone off his scent and then toss him in the loony bin in the basement." She flinches, and he swears under his breath and takes a long swig of bourbon. "Sorry, sister."

She curls her hands tighter around her glass and nods, spilling hair into her face. "No—it's fine."

"It don't look fine."

"It will be." (She hopes.) She sips from her glass and the smell burns her nose and the taste burns her tongue and her throat like liquid fire. She coughs and Leroy attempts to hide a smirk and she pushes her hair out of her face.

"A bit stronger than iced tea, huh?"

Her eyes water and she stifles another cough, wrinkling her nose and grimacing. "A bit."

"It'll get better," he says, and she's not sure if he's talking about the bourbon or her life.

She wraps her hands around the glass, sloshing the liquid inside and watching it swirl. "Who are they hiding him from?"

He laughs, bitter and biting as the alcohol. "Sister, just about half the town wants his head. And the other half wouldn't exactly cry themselves to sleep if he went missing."

"Including… Mister Gold?" She says it like a question, but it's more of an assumption. More of something in need of confirmation than answering. Something she knows and fears (and wishes she could forget.) Because she remembers his face in the corner of the lobby, the pitiless eyes, the tight lips. The vague and foggy terror-laced memories of asphalt and yelling and a fireball and 'murder is a bad first impression'. The anger beneath the anguish, as thick and dark as blood.

"You have no idea."

"Because he shot me?"

"More than that. Sounds like they've got quite the history."

She nearly laughs (because she has no memories and it's obvious even to her that they have 'a history'.) But it's no laughing matter because Mister Gold tried to kill someone, because Mister Gold is dangerous and she's seen it in his eyes. (Eyes that looked black instead of brown, cruel and hard and unfamiliar in a hospital lobby. Eyes without tears. Eyes that could never belong to someone who smiled at her and called her Belle and apologized a hundred times.) "If he's so dangerous, why'd he stop?"

"Who knows. But I'll tell you this much…" He drains his glass and sets it down on the counter with a 'smack' of heavy glass. "If he changes his mind and decides to kill the pirate, there ain't nothing any of us can do about it."

"You really think he'd…"She pauses. Beneath her loose sweater, she's trembling all over. Knees, elbows, fingers… every inch of skin afire and itching as if it might split open and leave her covered in sores. As if she might shake free of it as easily as a cloak, and be left as exposed and bare as she feels. (But she needs to have control of _something_, and so she takes a moment and a sip of bourbon, until her voice evens out and she doesn't sound as crazy as she feels.) "I mean, murder's pretty serious."

Leroy gives a shrug, as if it's enough to explain everything. "He's a real piece of work."

She takes another sip of her bourbon, and it's still strong and it still makes her cough. "I get that impression."

Leroy turns to her, eyes searching her face. "You want another?"

She looks down at her still half-full glass and shakes her head.

"Well, I do." He hops down off the stool. (It's high, and he's not much taller than her, and his legs only reach the bottom rung. So it really is a hop.) He rounds the counter and pulls open a cupboard.

"Can I ask you something?"

He rummages through the stash of bottles. "Sure."

"Who's Cora?"

The noise, clinking glass and sloshing liquid, stops. He pulls his hand away. Turns and looks at her with his brows knit and his jaw tight. "How do you know about her?"

"I don't. That's why I'm asking." The look on his face discourages her. It looks almost like disgust. Almost like anger. Almost like _Cora _is something so foul it overpowers the taste of alcohol and leaves Leroy feeling sick— and she's the one who brought the name into the house and so it's all her fault. (But under the weight of his eyes, the heft of his sneer, she nurses a tiny flicker of hope because maybe he'll be the first one to answer her questions without dodging away like she's wielding a firebrand. And maybe it's a question worth the asking.)

"Why is everyone so afraid of her?"

He grumbles something she can't hear.

"Leroy, please."

He turns back to the cupboard and begins transferring bottles from cupboard to shelf, reading labels and occasionally shaking the bottles to check the volume of liquid left inside. "I'm going to need a lot more to drink before we get into that conversation."

"Will you at least tell me who she is?"

He sighs and pulls down a small squarish bottle. He opens the lid and gives it a sniff and takes it back to his glass. "Regina-"

The name sends a jolt of panic, like electricity, down her spine. "The mayor. The woman who locked me up."

He nods. "Yeah. Cora's her mom."

The shaking starts up again and it bleeds into her voice and she can't bring herself to care. "Better or worse?"

"Worse."

"Dangerous?"

He dumps a mouthful of liquid from the bottle to his glass, from his glass to his mouth. He makes a face and gives a little sigh and says, "Yup."

"You're not going to tell me anymore, are you?"

"Nope."

"I wish you would."

"No you don't, sister. You'll just have to trust me on that one."

She wants to. She wants to forget about the rumours and fears and talks of town lines and whispers of magic and sit here and enjoy a drink with an almost-friend. She wants to believe him when he implies she'd be better off in a problem-less dimension where this tiny American town was idyllic and quaint instead of filled with secrets and pitted with harm. She wants to settle into a provincial life. But she can't.

Because the town isn't idyllic. The town is filled with secrets and dangerous people. The town has people named Mister Gold who says his name is Rumplestiltskin—and she hides behind her books, but that doesn't mean her ears don't work—and she's heard more than Rumplestiltskin, she's heard Snow White and Frankenstein and Hook and Evil Queen and _Cora_. And maybe it's real or maybe it's an elabourate hoax or a science experiment or maybe she's just losing her mind.

But either way, she wants to know. (She's been left in the dark far too long.)

She finishes her drink.

Leroy leads her down the hallway, past the flickering-chattering television room, onto the porch. The air is cold and she's pleasantly tired and maybe she'll sleep tonight if she doesn't dream of magic and monsters. He offers to drive her home but she waves him off (because she has no home, only a suitcase in a hospital room) and the night is agreeable and she'd rather walk. And so she does. Through the silent town on silent sidewalks. Past the library and Mister Gold's shop (and there's a light on inside, and he must be working) and Granny's diner and the bar and all the familiar-unfamiliar places she's grown to know over the last several weeks. Past the places that remind her she is outside (if not free) and she is alive (if not sane) and she is here (if not safe).

She slips in through the lobby long after midnight. She walks to her room with her gaze locked on the tiled floor because she can still feel their eyes (pawnbroker and pirate, brown and icey blue) boring into her like intravenous syringes of panic. She crawls under her too-thin blankets, and curls against a pile of clothes she wishes was another human being, and does not sleep.

It's been a bad day.

But she will fix herself, like she fixes library books, and Jane French will be more Eyre than Doe.

* * *

**A/N:** Everyone, thank you so much for the great response! I'm completely honoured. I really hope you continue to enjoy the direction I'm takig the story, and thanks so much for the great feedback. I'll do my best to reply to the reviews ASAP, but if you don't hear back from me in a couple of weeks, please send me a message and remind me! Also, thanks to AK for being da bomb. As always. Much love, dearest.


	5. Chapter 5

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

Jane sits on the chair in the corner of her room, curled up into the hard lumpy plastic as tightly as she can manage, and leafs through _Jane Eyre_ for the fourth time. She's finished the Austen novels and _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and everything by Victor Hugo she can get her hands on—she's torn through Doctor Whale's medical thrillers and Ruby's romances (and Emma doesn't read much but Henry's extra copy of _James and the Giant Peach _managed to find its way into her growing stack of books)— and she finds herself back at the beginning. Back with the Brontës. Back with Jane and Rochester and Thornfield Hall. And it doesn't matter that she's memorized half the passages by now (because there's nothing to jumble her memory so memorization is easier than it should be, perhaps) because they are comforting. They are familiar.

It's funny how a story (about a girl without a place to call her own) can make a quiet hospital room feel like home.

She's half-way through the fourteenth chapter when she hears voices. Not voices in her head, thank heavens (though it gives her momentary pause), but Emma and Doctor Whale. They've stopped walking and this wing of the hospital is empty enough and quiet enough that their voices drift through the open door with perfect clarity. But they don't know that.

"I don't like it," Emma says.

"I don't either."

"Then why are we doing this again?"

"Because it's the law."

Emma's the sheriff, but she mumbles some not-quite-audible complaint about "buzzkill rules" under her breath, and it makes Jane almost-smile.

"Unfortunately, Sheriff, our opinions don't matter. He's her emergency contact—" And Jane realizes they're talking about her, about _her_ emergency contact. "—and he should have been notified the moment she was admitted. We're pushing the boundaries as it is."

She hears something like the rustle of fabric, and the scuffing of shoes, and she imagines Emma grabbing Whale's arm. "You know what he tried to do."

Her blood runs cold. She wonders if they're talking about Mister Gold.

He's dangerous, she knows. Emma doesn't like him, she knows.

She's not sure what he "tried to do", but he (nearly) murdered and (overtly) threatened and _is dangerous_. (Just not to her.) And perhaps they've been keeping him away, which is why she hasn't seen him in weeks, apart from fleeting glances in the street or his regular routine of ordering a coffee to-go from Granny's at precisely 8 AM. But it would make sense if he were her emergency contact. The man who loved Belle… and whom Belle loved.

_(For Whom the _Belle_ Tolls_. She's read that too.)

Whale is still talking and Jane bites her lip and lowers her book and unfolds her legs. She leans forward in her chair and cocks her head to hear better. "It's done now. I can't keep lying to him. If she wants to see him, she had medical clearance long ago."

Footsteps muffle the remainder of their conversation—and she can't hear, but she needs to know because this is a piece of the mysterious puzzle, another link to her past she has not yet explored. Because this is a secret and there are already too many, and she may buckle under the weight of the unknown. And so she stands and leaves her book on the seat and makes her way closer to the door.

Doctor Whale sounds exasperated. "I'm sorry Sheriff, but it's final. I'm going to tell her he's here." The wall echoes with the sound of his tentative knock. "Jane, may I come in?"

He peeks his head through the open door and she stands only feet away. His eyes widen, eyebrows raised. She stops in place. She stands with her hands in front of her, clenched tight around the hem of her knitted green sweatshirt.

"Who's here?" she asks. She feels a momentary flash of guilt for eavesdropping, but squashes it with a show of white-knuckled determination. (Besides, it's only Doctor Whale and Emma. No reason to be afraid. No reason to cower.)

Whale steps into the room. Emma slides in behind him, hands shoved in her pockets and brow furrowed with reluctant annoyance.

Jane offers Emma a tiny smile and unclenches her fist long enough to wave.

"Belle, hey," she says in return, irritation smoothing somewhat. Doctor Whale elbows her and she clears her throat. "Jane, I mean."

Jane turns her eyes back to Whale. "_Who's_ here?"

He holds up a hand. "First of all, I'm sorry we didn't tell you before. This might be a bit of a shock for you—"

Emma cuts in. "—it's your dad."

Whale's jaw tightens.

Like a glass vial dropped down a long well, the news takes a moment to trickle down into her already treacherous sense of reality. But when it hits bottom (when her mind reels and her heart aches and her hope swells because _she has a father_ and _she is not alone)_, her mouth shakes itself into an almost-smile.

"My-" Her voice catches. Her eyes widen and her hands grip the bottom of her sweater tighter than she would have thought possible. "My father?"

Neither of them answer for a long, tremulous moment. Time itself seems to slink away, distorted and stretched out and dragging on forever. And she looks between them, eyes flitting with almost-excitement and almost-hope (and more almost-happiness than she's felt in long empty days.)

"Maurice French," Whale offers, finally.

"Moe," Emma says at almost the same moment.

"Where is he?" Jane asks.

"The cafeteria," Whale says.

Emma hooks her thumbs into her belt. "Not if I had anything to do with it." Whale turns to look at Emma, eyes narrowed. She raises her eyebrows. "What?"

And maybe she should ask why they were arguing, why Emma is so suspicious and so guarded, why they didn't tell her right away—why _her father,_ like everything else in this town, was kept a secret from her. (Why honesty is so scarce. Why she has to run to pry answers from Leroy with the neck of a bottle. Why Mister Gold looks at her with sad brown eyes and always tells her the truth.)

But she doesn't. She just stands and lets the implications of _father_ roll over her like waves of purple smoke.

"Do you want us to bring him here?" Whale asks.

She smiles, a real genuine smile that parts her lips and scrunches her eyes and helps to dull the lonely ache in her chest. "No," she says, and she looks at her suitcase against the wall. Runs her eyes over fabrics and feels the urge to change her clothes (like a new start). "I'll go to him."

xxxx

Her courage begins to falter by the time she reaches the cafeteria, but Emma has gone ahead and Whale's pager is tucked in the back pocket of her jeans (and she is wearing a navy blue blouse she has never worn before). So she presses on. She walks across tiled floors with clicking heels, and fixes her eyes on the brightness of Emma's jacket, and clutches _Jane Eyre_ to her chest to combat near-suffocating anxiety.

Emma steps aside, brow still furrowed and mouth pressed tight. For the first time in months (for the first time she remembers), Jane sees _her father_.

He's a large man, with a broad nose and a jowly face. (She is suddenly afraid of letting him down.)

He wears a khaki jacket and a white baseball cap and jeans all smudged with dirt, and even from here she can see he has calloused hands. (She is afraid of disappointing him, like she has disappointed so many others.)

As he concludes his discussion with Emma, she can hear his voice: deep and heavy, with a broad rounded accent, like hers. And she can see his hair: brown and curly, like hers. His eyes are shaded by the hat, but she is afraid his eyes will be brown (and old and sad, and to him she'll always be Belle, and she'll be nothing more than a familiar sort of stranger).

Emma folds her arms over her chest and nods her head in Jane's direction, and the florist – Moe French, _her father_ – pulls off his hat. He turns blue eyes in her direction and smiles.

(She is afraid he'll be wonderful, and she won't measure up.)

She barely has time to smile back before he pushes Emma out of the way and charges towards her like a bull. Heavy work boot footsteps on the tiles, a heavy smile and a heavy syllable of "Belle!" dropping from his lips like an anvil—and before she can move to put her book between her tiny body and his great bulk, his heavy arms wrap around her.

His hands press against her back, and she can feel the meat of them, the callouses through her thin silk blouse. And she doesn't know him. And he's touching her. But he's nearly crying and his broad chest is warm, and he's calls her "darling". And he's Moe French the florist, _her father _(and he smells of dirt and daffodils), so she lets him hold her until her skin crawls with spiders and his arms close around her like walls (and until she needs escape more than safety).

She wiggles away. She squirms her arms up between them and pushes against him and says, "please, please stop", and out of the corner of her blurry vision she can see Emma take a step forward.

She gives a last shove and he lets her go. She stumbles back into open air, two stutter-steps backwards to keep from falling.

His eyes (blue like hers) widen. "I'm so sorry," he says. He holds a hand out, half-way to her.

Despite her reeling head, she regains her balance. Her eyes flick down to the floor and she can see Emma's boots nearby and she clutches her book close to her chest. Doctor Whale's pager is in her back pocket and she manages to choke out, "It's- it's okay."

"Belle, I never meant—"

She isn't Belle.

But she _is_ afraid of disappointing him, so she looks up. Matching blue eyes make contact. She nods, and tries to hide her tears behind a smile. "W-" she pauses, looks side-eyed to Emma, who looks as though a thundercloud has just soaked her favourite picnic lunch, and takes a steadying breath. "Would you like to sit down… Father?"

Happiness seems to shrink him tenfold. His eyes crinkle and his face creases up with lines like a crumpled sheet of paper. He grabs her hand (and she _hates _it, it makes her skin crawl, her pulse rush and she wants to pull away) and he squeezes it (and does not notice how much it hurts her) and she wishes she could remember him (because maybe the action would feel like comfort instead of torment).

He is her father and he she does not find him wonderful (like she hoped and feared), but she has not disappointed him, either. And so she keeps smiling until he leads her to the nearest table and pulls out a chair for her.

She rests her book on her lap and he sits in Mister Gold's seat across the linoleum tabletop. (She notices Emma plop down at a nearby table with a folded newspaper she ostensibly intends to read and wonders how this smiling bulldog of a man—how _her father_—could warrant such a guard. She wonders what he "tried to do".) But she doesn't ask.

They talk.

Or rather, he talks.

She offers the occasional question, but conversation burbles from him like a brook, gentle and musical in his rolling accent and his soothing voice. Anecdotes of a flower shop punctuated by laughter. Years of gossip gleaned from living in a small town (the time Mister So-and-So bought flowers for his mistress and sent them to his wife, last-year's funeral decorated in hot-pink carnations by bequest of the deceased, Granny's seventh consecutive '29th birthday party' hosted by Ruby and strung up with chains of wildflowers, and a grand prize to whoever guessed her real age).

And sadness, too.

How he lived alone for so long. With only pictures of a dead wife for company, trudging day-to-day with the constant hope of a hospital call telling him his daughter was cleared to come home. How he had nearly lost Belle, even when he had found her. How he doesn't intend to make that mistake again.

He smiles, and tries to clasp her hands (except she moves them to her lap, hidden under the table), and tells her they have a chance.

For a fresh start.

For a new beginning.

For everything he had hoped and dreamed—even if she never remembers her mother, or even if she wants to go by Jane instead of Belle—because now they're finally together. Nothing is keeping them apart.

(And it's funny how _nothing_ brings him such hope_,_ when it so violently drives her away from everyone else she ever knew.)

It's funny, so she laughs, but uneasiness turns it dull and it breaks apart mid-air, like porcelain smashed against a concrete wall.

_Her father_ doesn't notice, and he talks of everything and nothing until his watch goes off. The alarm is warbling and high-pitched and it slices into her brain like heart-rate monitors and pagers. His exuberance melts away and he pushes a button to silence the _belle_."I should be getting back," he says. "Lunch break's over and the shop won't open itself."

"It was nice to see you," she says.

"You too," he says, but his smile is heavy (and his eyes are heavy on her, two pinpoints of focus that weigh more than lead) and he's slow to leave. He's fishing for something. Waiting for something. "I missed you, you know."

She smiles and nods.

He stands, but he doesn't step away. He fidgets with his watch, adjusts it on his wrist and fiddles with the clasp. "Would you—ah—" He looks from the floor to her face, brow furrowed. "You'll come to dinner, of course. Won't you?"

It's not quite a request and it's not quite a command and it's not quite an invitation (not quite a plea, like the chance for a hamburger). It's not quite what she wants, but not what she _doesn't_ want, either. It's too soon and too uncertain and too assuming of him, but his hope is tied up in her answer and perhaps this is her second chance. And so she says yes.

Plans are made for Wednesday, and she lets him kiss her on the cheek (with gritted teeth and squeezed-shut eyes).

He leaves.

Emma folds her paper, disappears, and returns a moment later with a package of cookies from the vending machine. Jane Eyre confronts Rochester, accompanied by the taste of chocolate and the cool feel of linoleum under her forearms, and Jane French waits for Wednesday.

* * *

**A/N: ** Thank you SO much for reading, everybody. I know I haven't replied to many of you, but I really really do appreciate it! I've just had midterms and essays due, and I figure using my time to actually WRITE the chapter (which I've barely had time to do) takes precedence over replying to reviews for the time being. But I have a little break until next month when all the madness starts again (yay exams!), so hopefully I'll be able to write AND reply within the next couple weeks. On the plus side, I'm still three chapters ahead- so I'll still be updating weekly unless things degenerate into übermadness.

Anyway, thank you thank you thank you again, and thanks to Anti-Kryptonite who is awesome (and looks over stories for me and pats me on the back when I hate things and straightens out all my silly typos) and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Also, never fear! I promise Gold and a smidgeon of happiness in the next chap. :) And it'll be worth waiting for... I hope. xD


	6. Chapter 6

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

The books have already been organized (by another _her_, in another life). But long weeks have passed since Belle, and dust has reconquered the building. It coats everything, muffles the colours of cloth-bound spines with a haze of grey, deadens the shine of polished banisters and bookshelves and tiles. It peppers the air and spirals lazily through beams of light, and she intends to master it.

She starts with the windows. (There is an old toolbox in a janitor's cupboard and she arms herself with a hammer and a crowbar to pry the boards away.) She mops the floors. (A broom and mop in the same cupboard, and a bucket on wheels with a bit of soap and vinegar.) She cracks open the front door for extra air, and ties a cloth around her mouth and nose… and then she dusts.

She cleans the furniture first. Most of the chairs are plastic, or wood, or faux-leather armchairs tucked in the corners, and those can be wiped off easily enough. But there are also beanbag chairs in the children's section (colourful and lumpy and filled with pores). So she takes those out onto the sidewalk and beats them with a broom handle until they send up reams of dust like false-smoke. Until it must look, from a distance, like she's lighting things on fire and watching them smoulder.

She will reclaim the building from dust and disorder. (She will reclaim her life.)

And then she will open the library.

xxxx

It takes her three days to reach the bookshelves. But she does, little by little, in frenzied little bursts of cleaning and long stretches of grit determination. Polished railings and oiled door hinges, a second thorough beating of the beanbag chairs, a futile attempt to get the elevator to work—and she is ready to confront the endless rows of dust-coated books. She clenches a clean cloth between her teeth like a pirate scuttling up a ship's rigging, and climbs the ladder. Except instead of a weapon, she carries a rag. And instead of pillaging and plundering, she intends to dust the shelves.

She's cleaned half the gardening section when she hears footsteps.

Her heart stutters. Nearly stops.

Against the silence of nothingness, the steps echo.

It's probably nothing (it's Ruby, or Emma, or Archie or _her father_), but habitual and indistinct terrors make it so hard to focus—so very hard to concentrate or reason or use her mind for anything but conjuring a worst case scenario – hard to do anything except to torment herself with images of pirates and fireballs and car crashes and gunshots. But somehow, in the midst of it all, she finds the will to speak.

"I'm sorry," she says, and her voice is self-assured and confident (whereas she is trembling and gnawed down to the bone with fear), "but the library's closed."

A moment's pause. And then a voice.

"It's Mister Gold. May I come in?"

(Mister Gold. Rumple or Rumplestiltskin or whatever-his-real-name-is, and she can't tell if she's relieved or terrified to hear him. She's shaking so violently, it could mean either.)

She leans her forehead against the cool wood of the shelf, focusing on breathing . Focusing on the ladder, and balance, and not toppling head first into cold tile. Focusing on the hesitant, tentative question he asks (a question because it is _her_ _choice_ to let him in, because it was Belle's library and he gave her the key).

"Miss French?"

She wants to hide. She wants to hide and not reply and not come out until Ruby drives up in a red mustang and takes her to Granny's for lunch. But he'll find her, if he cares to look. And he'll wonder why she hides, when he's only been kind to her and careful with her, as if he knows she might break. The answer is easy: she hides because she's afraid.

She hides because she is afraid, but she is also determined. And she is trying to be brave. And she wants answers (about him, about the world, about everything) more than comfort. More than safety. And so she makes her choice.

"I—" Her bravery fails on the first attempt. But she clears her throat and coughs (and pretends it's from the dust) and presses on. "I'm over here. In 'Gardening'."

His footsteps resume, restart, begin to scuffle-clack closer. Her hands grip the ladder. She presses her lips together—but when he rounds the corner… his appearance is oddly anticlimactic. No jolt of panic. No cold sweat, or terror buzzing in her brain like the hum of electrical wires. For the first time, her mind perceives him, not as a monster (with fire in his hand and hate in his tar-black eyes) but as a quiet old man with a cane and a picnic basket slung over his arm.

It's a relief (and there's her answer, she's _relieved_ to see him).

He stops abruptly at the sight of her on the ladder. His hands are unsteady as he slings the picnic basket from his arm and onto the floor. He takes three steps forward, and his hand is on the middle rung, steadying it (and she didn't know it was shaking, she didn't know she was so close to losing her balance) until she scrambles down and finds her footing on solid ground once more.

"Thank you," she says quietly.

"I didn't mean to startle you." It's another apology. She has a pretty collection by now, it seems. (She's not sure if he errs more than everyone else, or just tries harder to admit it.)

"It's—it's fine," she says. And it really is. Because she'd rather it be him than the pirate. Him than some unfamiliar terror. Him because he's dangerous (but not to her). She wipes dusty hands on her dusty skirt and asks, "What can I do for you, Mister Gold?"

"Nothing."

"Then what do you want?" The words tumble from her mouth, coated in suspicion, washing away the veneer of polite behaviour. But he doesn't chastise her, or tell her to behave, or to mind her tongue. And he doesn't threaten her with sedatives for being (_hysterical_) uncivil.

He only smiles a sad little smile and picks up the basket. "I just wanted to give this to you." He makes no move to force it upon her. He doesn't step forward, or reach out, or speak—just stands there with it slung over his arm. (It's so out of place, light wicker against a navy suit.) He's silent and still and he waits.

Something about his patience settles her nerves.

"Okay," she says, and he reaches across the gap between them. Even when their hands meet (accidentally, because the handle isn't big enough and she needs to use both hands to lift it from his arm), he keeps to himself. For a moment he looks like a wounded animal (big sad eyes staring at his hand, as if the touch frightened him more than it frightened her). But then he curls his hands around the handle of his cane, lets his fingers dance atop the gold, and he swathes himself in control and quiet confidence once more. But she notices he still doesn't look at her.

She bites her lips and tears her gaze away. (He can't look at her, but she can't seem to stop staring.) She glances down to the basket. The lid is fastened with a tiny metal latch, and when she pulls it open with fumbling fingers to reveal plastic-wrapped sandwiches, cookies, and an assortment of fresh fruit and vegetables, she frowns. "You brought me lunch."

He smiles, inclines his head. "If I recall correctly, cleaning always gave you _quite_ the appetite." His eyes flick away, though his smile never wavers. "I thought you might be hungry."

She is hungry.

And she is supposed to be meeting Ruby for lunch at two.

But there is something in his quavering, hesitant smile that depends on her answer, something hopeful and delicate and too easily crushed. (And her breath catches at the thought of seeing it die—because she's broken too much of his already.)

So she carries the basket to the table.

The tension eases out of his shoulders.

She pulls out three different sandwiches, each carefully halved, and a plastic container of carrot sticks in water. An apple, an orange, a banana, and a luscious bunch of grapes. A water bottle and a vacuum flask. Chocolate chip cookies in plastic wrap. More than enough food, even for someone with _quite the appetite_. She arranges the food into a small lineup, presented for inspection, and looks to Mister Gold out of the corner of her eye.

He watches her without really watching her. Gazes from a distance, careful glances measured and divided between her surroundings. His eyes flitting over the shelves, the chair, the floor—and then resting on her, so feather-light she hardly notices—and then back to the windows, his shoes, his hands.

She realizes another choice hangs in the balance. (Another choice that makes her hands tremble and jaw tighten and stomach roil.) She opens the vacuum flask and draws her nose close to catch the scent of iced-tea. (Another choice could well determine her fate. Carve out a new path in a new direction.) She pulls out the single plastic cup from the basket and fills it. And then she slides it across the table in front of an empty wooden chair. (Another choice that will make her brave.)

"Would you care to join me?"

Behind his measured expression, his eyes flare to life, joy and sadness and gratitude like a bonfire. Like a fireball. Restraint and not-quite-hope and inconsolable pain staring back from the depths of an endless dark tunnel. It wounds him, and it frightens her, but he says 'yes, of course' and he crosses the floor with the slow, halting steps of a man in a daze. They sit across from one another at the small wooden table and she unwraps the sandwiches.

"Thank you for inviting me," he says.

"You sound surprised."

He gives a shrug and does not answer. She pushes the container of carrot sticks across the table, and pulls several from the dripping water. Long, delicate fingers that can't quite hide a tremble. And she realizes that he is terrified-or-possibly-relieved, just like her.

She wonders—and before she can quell the urge, her thoughts become words. "If you didn't expect to stay, why did you make so much food?"

"I didn't know what kind you liked," he says.

"That's—" That's not the answer she expected. (But it's the truth.) "That's very kind of you," she says.

"Now _you_ sound surprised."

"I suppose I am." She likes all the sandwiches well enough, so she takes a half of each and slides the remaining halves over to Gold. She decides to trade him, honesty for honesty. "I was—I am—a little afraid of you, you know."

He accepts the sandwiches (and her admission) without a word, and takes a sip of iced-tea from the little plastic cup.

"But I think I'm getting better." She glances down to the table, adjusts her sandwiches and lines up the edges of the crusts. She folds her hands into her lap to keep from fiddling and looks up at him, studying him with a tilted head and narrowed eyes. "You know, you seem… different... than I expected. Considering what everyone says about you."

"And what do they say?" He asks the question with a tiny smirk curling at the edge of his lips, like he already knows the answer.

(That he's cruel and heartless and conniving and she's heard so many rumours it makes her head buzz just to think of them all.)

"That you're a monster," she says. But he doesn't seem like one. Not now, anyway. Not when his eyebrows raise in sardonic amusement, and his eyes twinkle with secrets. Not when they're sitting in the library together, with sandwiches and carrot sticks spread out before them like a grand feast.

"Appearances can be deceiving," he says. He picks up a carrot and twirls it between his fingers. "What else do they say?"

"That you're dangerous."

He laughs—or at least, she thinks it's a laugh. It's a quiet sort of scoff, air through his mouth and a cruel twist of his lips. "Of course they do." Bitter and sardonic.

"Are they lying?"

A shake of his head, a gentle sway of his hair around his face. "No." His eyes drop to the table, and he sets the carrot back on the corner of his plastic-wrap, flicking a droplet of water away. "Not about that, no."

"Oh." It's all she can think to say. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You asked," he says.

Silence clatters down like a toppled-over ladder.

She takes a bite of her first sandwich (tuna, though she barely notices how it tastes because everything is coated with fear and confusion and relief, and everything is sawdust in her mouth) and tries not to stare at him as she chews. But it's difficult, because he is an enigma. He is (maybe) a monster who (maybe) still loves her. And (maybe) if he loves her he's not a monster after all.

And for the first time she wishes Mister Gold was more like her father—all stories and chatter and sucking the air out of the room. Because maybe he overwhelmed her and crowded her—but at least then she could let herself be swept away in the conversation. At least then she wouldn't have to scramble to fill the silence. Because if Gold was like her father, she wouldn't notice how wounded and bleeding and quiet and old and _so very sad_ he looked. And it would be easier.

Another question bubbles to the surface of her mind. She snaps a carrot stick in half and stares down at it—bright and over-saturated after a lifetime in a hospital (and the endless hours of dust). She presses her thumb nail against the carrot and leaves a dent. "Why are you doing all this for me?"

"Do I need a reason?"

"I think everyone has reasons for what they do."

(It's her opinion. Her very own.)

"I made a promise," he says after a long moment.

She looks up. "With Belle?"

A nod.

"What did you promise her?"

He looks uncomfortable. It's a personal question. A prying question. But he's only ever been honest with her and so he tears off a corner of his sandwich and answers, "I promised I'd protect her."

"And… that's why you're bringing me sandwiches?" It's a question, but her voice dips at the end as her brows crinkle together.

He stares at the broken piece of bread in his hands, turns it slowly with long fingers. He shakes his head. "No," he says. His voice is a whisper, his voice belongs in the hush of the library (except the library should be a place where she feels happy and safe, not like her heart is being tugged from her chest with razor wire). "I'm bringing you sandwiches because I couldn't keep that promise."

The metaphorical razor wire does its work. She folds her arms across her chest, as if it might keep her heart in, the cold out, as if it might stop the words from burrowing into the back of her mind and haunting her nightmares. (And she doesn't remember—and it feels like getting shot all over again—so she can only imagine how it must hurt _him_.)

She manages to untangle her arms long enough to take a sip of iced-tea, straight from the flask. (If Leroy had brought her lunch, there'd be something stronger. She thinks she could use something stronger.) "It was… an accident."

"No," he says. His voice is all edges and broken glass (and he is dangerous, she knows, and this time she believes it). "No, this was no accident. This was _a tragedy_." The sandwich drops onto the plastic wrap and he stabs a finger into the table hard enough to make a 'thud'. "And I was powerless to stop it."

He's right. It is a tragedy. Her entire life is a loss, from the start. She exists because another woman was snuffed out—Jane for Belle, and she doesn't think it's worth the trade. And it hurts to recognize it. It hurts to realize that she's walking around town like Belle's ghost and Belle's (forgotten) memories and everyone else has to live with the bereavement of a woman she can't even remember.

It hurts to know that he (Mister Gold or Rumple or Rumplestiltskin) sees the face of the woman he loved looking back at him with tears and terror.

She wants to touch him. (It startles her, as sudden and unexpected as her first laughter or his appearance in her library long minutes ago.) But she wants to touch him because nobody touches him—because he needs touch almost as much as she needs _not_ to be touched. Because his face is still and his eyes are cast down, but she can tell he's being torn apart by a thousand shards of shrapnel and maybe a touch will help stop the bleeding.

But she isn't brave.

And she isn't Belle.

And she doesn't think her touch will make enough of a difference, when the brush of his skin against her fingertips will bear such a heavy price. (But maybe her words can help.) "Do you think she'd forgive you?" she asks, careful to keep her voice quiet and gentle and hopeful and kind.

"I don't know," he says. She can hear almost-tears in his voice, even if his eyes are dry and locked onto a plastic-wrap-platter of picnic lunch.

She wishes he had a better answer. It would help her understand Belle—what she wanted and what she liked, what type of person she was. What she thought of Mister Gold is important—because it could speak volumes of him (and volumes of Belle, and offer her an encyclopaedic understanding of their common loss).

But he doesn't have an answer. And so she decides to give him one. (And she hopes she's right, because it would break her heart to lie to him after all the truths he's given.)

"I think she would," she says, finally.

His head snaps up. (And why is it that every sudden action reminds her of the sound of a gun, why his head snaps up _as if he heard a gunshot_ instead of _as if she spoke unexpected words_?)

She shudders, and her breath is shaky (and her words come to her in fits and starts and porcelain fragments). But he needs those words, and so she tries to piece them together.

"I don't know much about her—I mean, I don't remember—but I think she would. Forgive you. If you're trying, and if you're sorry…" It's a foolish thing to say because _of course_ he's sorry and _of course_ he's trying. Anyone who looks at him can see that, plain as day. But she thinks he needs to hear it (and she thinks he needs to be touched, but she keeps her arms where they are). "I don't think she could ask for more."

Tight lips, shimmering searching eyes across her face, and he rips another corner off his sandwich even though he hasn't eaten a single bite.

"Thank you," he says. "For saying that."

"You're welcome," she says.

He lifts the torn sandwich into his mouth and chews. She pops the remainder of her carrot stick into her mouth.

They eat lunch together.

He's quiet, but they both relax after half a sandwich and half a thermos of iced-tea, and she finds she can coax little stories and little jokes out of him. And it's not as bad as she had feared, not strained or terrifying or agonizing. In fact, it's almost comfortable, because he occasionally smiles and she occasionally laughs. Because he's funnier than he lets on, (and maybe eventual hamburgers aren't such a bad idea after all).

When they finish lunch, he helps her clean the table. She returns his (nearly empty) picnic basket, and walks him to the door.

Her heels clack on the tiles. His cane makes a rubber-stopper squeak.

"Thank you," she says again.

"You're most welcome… Jane." The word seems to stick, but she hardly notices the hesitation because it's the first time he's called her Jane. (And it takes a moment to remember that Jane is _her name_ because his mouth always calls her Miss French and his eyes always call her _Belle_.)

"Will you—" She swallows, tightens her hands over her sleeves (over dark grey dusty sleeves, and she wishes she was wearing something brighter). "Will you come back?"

He turns slowly to face her, keeping his distance still, with a picnic basket on his arm. His lips twitch, an almost-smile of almost-hope (and she almost-smiles back), and he asks, "Do you want me to?"

She doesn't know. (But she thinks she might.) She shrugs. A quick glance up to him, teeth catching her bottom lip. "Do _you _want to?"

"That's not what I asked," he says.

She rallies her strength. And then she nods.

"Okay then," he says. "I'll suppose I'll see you later." His accent is thick, and the 'r' at the end of the word rolls away from him. "Good luck with your cleaning."

Her mind is already backpedalling, spinning wild and panicked thoughts through her head, flooding her veins with jittery ice water. But she remembers he tells her the truth. She remembers he is kind to her. She remembers she has a choice.

And for a moment (and maybe a moment is all she needs), she is brave.

She looks up at him and smiles. "I'll see you later, Mister Gold."

His smile turns sad, but it's still a smile (and this is the first time she's given him reason to smile at their parting) and it ignites a flicker of courage inside her. "Goodbye, Miss French."

When Mister Gold disappears into his shop across the street, she closes the door and slides the deadbolts into place.

When the clock strikes two, she pulls her phone from her pocket and texts Ruby for a rain-check.

* * *

**A/N: ** HI PEEPS. Mister Gold and a smidgeon of happiness, as promised. :)

Thank so much for reading, reviewing, faving, etc. chapter six, also affectionately titled 'GOLD'S LUNCH'. (with capital letters, always.) Of course I enjoy writing for myself (and for AK, mah darling beta and friend who is awesome), but writing for you guys is a huge part of it too, and I'm so gratified that everyone's continuing to tune in each week! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Hopefully it was worth the wait!

Also, I'm continually sorry for not replying to anyone. I basically just suck at life, and the explanation is that 1: I was failing German so 2: I spent so much time on German that now I'm not failing it 3: but now I'm not doing SO great at my other stuff because I spent so much time working on German and 4: it's a toss up between writing, sleep, and replying to people, and I'm kind of lazy so sleep usually trumps and writing comes next. So my apologies. I haven't forgotten. It just might have to wait until after exams, unless I can get my act together.

BUT I LOVE YOU ALL AND YOU ALL ROCK. Peace out.


	7. Chapter 7

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

Everything is 'fine' on Wednesdays (but not much better).

Everything is 'fine' with her father, but from what she's read of fathers, fine is merely a shade of what should be. (A gloomy spectre, because she could fly into his arms and call him daddy. A dim reflection, because they could dance together on the living room carpet, just for a laugh and a smile. A mirage as heavy as blanketing nightfall, because she could _love_ him, and her visits are only fine.)

By the second Wednesday— when she finds herself shuffling reluctantly from sterile hospital room to cramped bungalow, for a mediocre dinner and equally inspiring company— she knows something has to change. She wants so much more from her life than anything 'fine'can offer_._

But she doesn't know what to do about it.

And so she goes to dinner.

And she sits. And she waits. And she smiles at the appropriate times, and tries not to flinch when he places a hand on her arm, and chews undercooked spaghetti in almost-silence. She pushes her dinner around on her plate, and feels like a guilty child. And her father, for all his blustering and self-propelled chatter, notices.

"Is something wrong?" he asks, between a mouthful of pasta and a sip of red wine. (He wears half-a-suit: dress pants and a dress shirt with the top collar open and the cuffs unbuttoned. It doesn't fit him in manner or sleeve length.)

She forces a smile and shakes her head. She should meet his eyes, but the pasta sauce is garishly red in the orange-yellow of the overhead lamp, and it's easier to smile at her plate.

"Not hungry?"

"I just had a late lunch, that's all."

"What did you have?"

"Cobb salad," she says. Her eyes flick up to the basket of garlic bread, and then down to the skirt of her yellow dress. "And fresh bread."

"Sounds delicious."

She smiles and nods and cuts a strand of spaghetti in half with the side of her fork.

She imagines he eats at Granny's as often as he eats at home (the undercooked spaghetti reinforces her suspicion), because he nods thoughtfully and says, "New on the menu?"

"Homemade."

"Trying your hand at cooking now?" He twirls his spaghetti onto his fork and then looks up at her, mouth broad and smiling, blue eyes crinkling with amusement. "Well, at least you're guaranteed to be better at it than your old dad."

"Dinner is fine, Father. Thank you." She smiles, and looks up at him (he looks so strange, bare-headed, and he holds his fork like a garden spade). He smiles back at her and she shakes her head. "But I said it was homemade—I never said I made it."

Besides, how can she make it 'homemade' when she doesn't have a home?

She hasn't done much cooking since _before_, because she doesn't have a stove or a fridge at the hospital. Because she doesn't have pots and pans unless she uses Emma's and Mary Margaret's, and their tiny apartment is already filled to bursting without her invading their kitchen. And why should she?—when there are cafeterias and restaurants and people bringing her casseroles (like she's sick or there's been a funeral).

"Did Ruby make it?"

She shakes her head. Hair falls into her face, and she would tie it up with the yellow ribbon she wears in a bow around her wrist, except that it makes her neck and shoulders feel so exposed. (Except that her hair protects her, like the napkin lying across her lap protects her dress, and cold air on bare skin still makes her want to cry.)

"Emma?"

Another shake of her head.

He begins to recite his way through the list (including Doctor Whale and Leroy, who she doesn't think has ever eaten a salad in his life), and each time she shakes her head. His smile slips with each failed guess (and for the first time she wonders if his happiness is as forced as her own), until he holds up his hands and shrugs. "I give up. Who is it?"

"Mister Gold."

She says it like it should be obvious. And maybe it should, if she and Gold were as close (_before)_ as everyone says they were. And surely her father should have guessed, except that his burly tan face looks pale and almost thin, and his features sharpen and set like concrete blocks, and his fists tighten over his cutlery.

"Gold?" He says the name with a tremble in his voice, (like a warning _Belle_¸ like klaxons sounding in her mind.)

"Yes?" She answers like a question, though she doesn't mean it that way.

What she means is that _yes_, Mister Gold made her lunch. And _yes_, she ate with him. And _yes_, he's only been kind to her, and _yes_ this is a good thing (because she was terrified … and now she's not). And her father should be happy for her, because she can walk down the street without shaking, and she can pass his shop without crossing the street, and she can laugh and smile and maybe soon she can move into the library. Maybe leave the confining safety of hospital walls behind her, forever.

But answers like a question because her father's blue eyes widen in horror— and he stares at her like she's destroyed his favourite flower bed. Like months of hard work have been trampled underfoot and she's the one with soil on her shoes. Like he doesn't know her. (And he doesn't, not really.)

"Belle—" She's not Belle. "—are you saying you ate lunch with Mister Gold?"

"Is—there a problem with that?"

Her father sets his fork (with the spaghetti still twirled around it) down on the plate with a clink of glass and metal. His broad, calloused hand rubs his jaw and rasps against his stubble. "Yes, there's a problem."

"Why?"

"Because." A flush of angry red begins to creep up his neck and into his face. He puts his hand on the back of his neck (like it aches, like the very name of Mister Gold bruises him) and she thinks she might see pain and fear and almost-tears in his eyes. (But the lamp is dim and it's hard to see.) His jaw clenches so tightly that his jowls shake. "Because he's a monster."

She bites her lip. She cuts another piece of spaghetti in half.

He begins to sputter. "He's—he's a brute. He's cruel. He destroys everything he touches and he'll destroy you too."

Surely not after all this time. Not when the image of Mister Gold (in his dress-shirt with rolled up sleeves, taking time from his busy life to slice chicken and cheese into tiny symmetrical squares just for her) fills her stomach with warmth instead of icy terror. Not after he's proven himself and everyone in town says he'd never hurt her.

"He's a beast, Belle."

And she may not have memories, but she does have a library (and the irony isn't lost on her in the least).

Still not looking up from her plate, she finds the will to speak. "I—I don't think he is, Father."

"What?"

She presses her lips together. She would rather run than fight. She would rather maintain her silence and preserve mediocrity... but there have been enough lies in this town. And she needs to fight for the truth. (Because if she doesn't, who will?)

She clears her throat, shaking and tremulous in the face of her father's (maybe not) unjustified dismay, and lifts her chin until her eyes meet his. "He's not a beast."

"You don't know what he's done," her father says.

She doesn't know anything. (And she wishes he would let her live her life— for just one moment—without reminding her of everything she's lost.) "But I know him now. And maybe he's changed."

"In the two months you've known him?"

He doesn't mean to be flippant, she's sure. But the words hit her, knock her down like a sledgehammer to the leg, leave her scrambling in disbelief. The words strip her of the independence she's fought for, tooth and nail, for nine long weeks. (And _her father_ never notices.)

"I've known him for years, Belle. I don't care if he brings you salad. You can't make excuses for a man like that."

"He's sorry," she says. He's sorry, and he's kind, and he tells the truth. (Monsters don't do that. Monsters don't offer their first names even if it is 'Rumplestiltskin'. Monsters don't almost-cry over hamburgers and broken teacups.)

"Is he sorry for losing you? Of course he is. You're payment from one of his deals. You're a grab for power. You're—" He throws up a hand and it lands on the table with a bang and a car-crash rattle of glass and metal. "You're his lawn ornament."

Tears press sharply at the back of her eyes. In her blurred vision, the sauce on her plate looks too much like blood.

"He doesn't love you, Belle. He put a spell on you."

A spell.

Of course he doesn't mean magic (flashes of fireballs and healed shoulders, tiny infusions of fear directly into her bloodstream). He means power, or influence, or blackmail (or even the blinders of _love_). There's a sane explanation, certainly a sane explanation, but his words paralyze her nonetheless.

She can feel her bravery running away.

"Father, please…"

But her father doesn't stop. He drains his wine in a single long swig and barrels through, with his barrel chest heaving and his barrel voice booming. (And the air is heavy.) "He took you."

She drops her hands into her lap and crumples napkin and dress together in her fists, twisting fabric and paper until her knuckles ache.

"He imprisoned you."

Panic rolls over her in waves, cold air on her skin (even though her hair is down), the ribbon on her wrist like a shackle, her yellow dress a twin to the hospital gown she wore for long endless days. Nausea twists her gut like she twists her dress, and it has nothing to do with the spaghetti and all to do with Father and Mister Gold. (And there is no relief when she thinks of his name, because his name has made her dinner so much less than _fine_.)

She can feel her mind remembering _that man_ (with bared teeth and black eyes), instead of Mister Gold (with quiet resignation and a soft, brown gaze that never presses too hard).

"He nearly killed me."

The world slows to a spaghetti-sauce consistency. The kitchen clock ticking in sluggish half-time. Each breath and each heartbeat a hundred miles apart.

"Nearly killed you?" her voice is shaking, shaking again after _days _of reliability. She feels whipped and beaten down and pushed into a corner. "Surely—surely he didn't. Maybe it was an accident? Maybe it's a misunderstanding?"

Nearly killed the pirate, certainly, but the pirate had shot her and the pirate wore a cruel sneer and taunted Gold's pain. She could understand. But to nearly kill _her father_, who is heavy and unrelenting and only wants what is best for her—

"He held me at gunpoint, Belle. He tied me up and drove me into the woods. He beat me."

The world spins and arches its back and threatens to buck her off. She teeters on the extreme edge of reality, and she can see Mister Gold with his hands around the pirate's neck, she can see the fireball and the cruelty, and maybe her father is right after all and there _is_ a beast inside him. (But he is also kind and she cannot reconcile the two, cannot imagine Cobb salad and assaults at gunpoint.)

"It's true. You can ask Doctor Whale. I still wear a neck brace when I sleep."

Only one word surfaces. "Why?"

"Because that's who he is."

"Why are you telling me this?" She looks up at him. He is out of place and out of sorts in his half-a-suit. His fingers rub together and they are stained with dirt (impervious to a hundred washings) and she knows he wants to hold her hands. But she can't reach for him because, if she does, he might never let go.

But his blue eyes are wide and honest, and his blue eyes hold pain (though not half as much as brown eyes can hold). And she knows he is telling the truth when he finally says, "Because he's taken you away from me. Twice. And I won't let it happen again."

xxxx

They skip dessert and her father drives her back to the hospital.

He drops her off in the parking lot and she says goodbye without looking up from the pavement.

The pager is in her purse, with Jane Eyre and seven dollar bills and the yellow ribbon (because the tightness of it around her wrist had been about to drive her mad), and Doctor Whale meets her in the lobby. He asks if she's okay and calls her Jane (calls her by _her name_, because he always remembers and her father never does), and brings her to her room.

When she asks, he tells her the truth (gunpoint, kidnapping, two broken ribs and a bruised spine and a battered-up-face), and offers her a handkerchief when she begins to cry.

She changes out of her yellow dress and into jeans and a sweatshirt.

She finds herself on Leroy's porch at ten o'clock at night, and they watch late-night talk shows over a glass of rum until night becomes morning. They don't talk, but his silence and his perpetual scowl settle her nerves. He flicks channels, and she nearly falls asleep on his couch, and she knows she'll be okay.

She'll be 'fine'.

(Eventually.)

* * *

**A/N: **I replied to reviews on 'Archive of Our Own'. This week or next week should be fanfiction dot net reviews! So brace yourselves! This week is also 'write my final papers' week, though, so... on second thought maybe don't get your hopes up. Anyway, thanks so much for reading and reviewing, as always, and thanks to AK for an awesome beta-ing job. Hope you enjoyed this chapter and continue to enjoy all the later chapters, and thanks so much for the great support! Your reviews are all lovely and awesome and I'm totally flattered. :)


	8. Chapter 8

Blank Slates and Brown Eyes

She sits in her room with the door open (like she has for days), and watches the nurses pass by. They're always in a hurry, always moving, with clipboards or syringes or plastic bottles of pills. Always busy, carried down the hall in a rapid current, while she sits (landlocked) on the shore of a little island and watches everything else flow past.

It seems like she's been here forever.

Sometimes she has difficulty remembering that the world turns on without her.

As she flounders in a mire of emotions and jumbled up thoughts, people live. Babies are born and children break bones, people come in with ruptured appendixes and gaping wounds (and she overheard a man claim that a giant caused it, but surely the blood loss had gone to his head). Without her knowledge or her presence, people get married and divorced, watch movies, go bowling, work and play (and eat Cobb salad in libraries when things start looking bright for the first time in weeks). While she sits cross-legged on a hospital bed, life happens.

It's reassuring. But it's also lonely.

And so, relief outweighs annoyance (if only just) when a sudden burst of red, like an emergency flare, interrupts the flow of uniform white. Emma (dark jeans and tall boots, clad in red leather jacket, a startling and welcome change from whites and greys and muted shades of blue) pokes her head just inside the open door, rapping her knuckles awkwardly on the wall to announce her presence.

Jane offers a smile and a small, awkward wave, and wishes she could do better.

"Belle—Jane, I mean, hi," Emma says, and her words are as stiff as Jane's wave. "Do you mind… if I come in?"

She shrugs, but the smile stays. "Door's open."

Emma visibly relaxes. Starting at her shoulders and working its way down to the rest of her, the tension drains from her body, and she steps into the room with a languid stride and loosely-swinging arms. She carries a plastic shopping bag, which hits against her thighs with a dull 'clunk' and crinkle of plastic. Her smile is fixed (not quite easy but not quite fake) and she looks around the room with a critical eye. (She's probably just sizing up the new photographs Jane has stuck to the wall, but it looks like she's sweeping the perimeter for snipers.)

"I love what you've done with the place," she says after a long moment. Her tone is drier than hospital food, and she raises a single shaped eyebrow. Her stance, however, moves from awkward to casual—and Jane has spent enough time with her to pick up the sincerity hidden behind a friendly joke.

"Thank you. Sticky tack is a marvellous thing."

Last week, Mary Margaret brought in a stack of back issue _National Geographic_ magazines. Now half of the featured shots are stuck to the walls. Panama. Canada. Paris. Egypt. Iceland. Australia. Wisconsin. Anywhere and everywhere, and with the help of scissors and some sticky tack, Belle soon set to plastering the drab hospital room with dozens of glossy page-sized photographs. (Plastering the drab hospital room with windows to the outside world, mountains and forests and rivers, serving as a catalogue of adventures she doesn't want—but can't help admire.)

Jane watches Emma, who is kind enough to come (without being asked) and kind enough to leave (if asked), and decides her solitude can stand to be broken. "Do you… want to sit down?"

Emma tears her eyes away from a photo of a redwood forest, and shifts the shopping bag in her hand. "Thanks." She takes a seat on the plastic chair beside the hospital bed, and hoists the bag onto her lap. She reaches her arm inside and pulls out a thermos. (History suggests iced tea or bourbon as the answer to the mystery, but Jane is fairly certain thermoses are quite capable of holding liquids outside the realm of her personal experience.)

Thankfully, Emma doesn't prolong the suspense. "I brought hot chocolate, if you're thirsty."

"I'd love some." Especially the way Emma makes it. (She'd had the drink several times at Granny's, but the true love affair had begun two weeks ago when Henry snuck up behind her at the counter-slash-bar and sprinkled cinnamon on top.)

Emma frowns and twists the lid, peering inside. "Well, I hope it's still hot chocolate. It might be luke-warm chocolate by now. You wouldn't believe what I put up with to get it here." Emma pulls a mug (a real mug, not a plastic cup) from the bag and dumps the chocolate unceremoniously into it. "First, this was the last of the mix. I had to beat Henry off with a stick to get at it. Then I had to wash a thermos, because David took the last of them to work and forgot to do the dishes." She tops the chocolate with a dash of cinnamon from a small plastic baggie, and then hands it to Jane. "Then my car wouldn't start, because I left the headlights on. So I took the squad car."

Jane curls her hands around the warming porcelain. (The chocolate is, mercifully, still quite warm.)

"Then I spent the last fifteen minutes arguing with Doctor Whale about how you didn't want to see anyone." Emma sprinkles cinnamon into her thermos and swirls it like a fine wine. "He can be annoyingly persistent."

Jane takes a tentative sip and smiles. "He'd probably say the same about you."

She takes a long swig (tossing it back as easily as Leroy and a shot of bourbon), licks her lips, and nods. "And a good thing, too, or you'd be drinking tea and I'd be doing dishes."

Jane shrugs. "Tea's not bad."

Emma frowns into her thermos. "Neither are dishes, but that's not exactly how I want to spend my night."

Instead, Emma chooses to spend it with her, with Jane (with a woman who hides herself in a hospital instead of responding to dinner invitations and Ruby's incessant texting). She chooses to spend her night with a woman who curls herself up in a blanket (instead of a dress and the sound of friendly laughter)and surrounds herself with photographs of animals and mountains (instead of the sights and sounds and smells of the real world).

(A woman who is hiding and afraid and lost.)

Jane takes another sip and stares into her mug (and she's glad the porcelain is forest green instead of white and blue, because her head is already pounding). Tiny particles of cinnamon drift around the surface of the chocolate, and as she watches their hypnotic journey, she finds her voice.

"I'm sorry to cause you so much trouble," she says.

Emma takes a sip and stares at her over the rim of her thermos. "Don't worry about it," she says. "It's not a big deal."

But it's too late not to be worried about it, because she _is_ worried about it, because Emma has a family and a life and she could be doing dishes or watching tv but she's _here_ instead. (And she is worried, because she can feel the panic whirling like the tendrils of a spinning galaxy, curling like seaweed around her ankles and dragging her down into the darkness, choking her like a poisoned apple lodged in her chest). Because she was getting so much better and now she's a wreck.

The silence taunts her and it's heavy and it drives her mad like the incessant tick of a clock. She speaks to drown out the sound of nothing.

"You really didn't have to do this, you know. I mean—I'm fine—here, by myself." Her mouth moves, but her head doesn't seem to agree, and she ends up nodding and shaking her head and pursing her lips in jumble of movement she can neither define nor control. "I don't mind. Nothing's wrong. I'm not hurt. I just… need some space."

"Jane—"

She holds up her hand to cut Emma off. (She wishes her eyes weren't swimming with tears.) "I'm _fine_."

It's not quite the truth. But it's not a lie.

She is less fine than she was four days ago, before her father brushed away her progress with a wave of his hand (like she brushes away cobwebs from the long-forgotten corners of the library), but she is coping.

At least she's not afraid. She's more _angry_ than anything, more frustrated or confused or maybe numb. (And maybe she's okay with that because numbness is easier than painful itchy healing.) She's tired of sympathy and pity and not-answers and not-truths and dealing with people who expect her to trust them when they sneak around with bags of secrets slung over their shoulders. But she is not crying (much) and she is not shaking (anymore) and it's her choice to stay here (alone) if she wants.

"Do you want me to go?" Emma asks.

Jane stares into her mug. She shrugs.

"Hey, I get it," Emma says. She gives a one-shouldered shrug and rustles through the plastic bag to find the lid to her thermos. "Sometimes people do better on their own." A hollow metal echo of the lid being screwed on, another rustle of the bag, the scrape of the chair against the tile. She stands, but doesn't walk away, and her hand momentarily rests on the edge of the mattress like she wants to say something but can't quite find the words. "Just—" The plastic bag crackles, white noise and radio static, as she shifts uncomfortably. "— make sure this is one of those cases."

Jane nods. She lifts her mug to her lips and takes a sip.

"I'll see you soon," Emma says.

Emma's boots pound their way across the floor, and the flicker of red leather in the corner of her vision fades away into whites and blues and greys and the lonely square photos of far off places. (And maybe this isn't one of those cases.)

She wants solitude. (But not isolation.)

She wants to be left alone. (She doesn't want to _be_ alone.)

Maybe she doesn't know what she wants (but she has to push forward or she'll never find out.)

"Emma, wait?"

The footsteps stop.

Jane rubs her thumbs against the porcelain and bites her lip and looks up. "Do you—want to go for a walk?"

"On one condition," Emma says.

Jane looks up. "What's that?"

Emma glances between Jane and the plastic bag, between the mug and the door. "We go for refills at Granny's after."

Jane swallows the remainder of her hot chocolate from her mug and sets it on the bedside table. She swings her legs over the side of her bed and plants bare feet on the ground. "Deal," she says. She smoothes creases out of her dark jeans and fights a smile. "But you're buying."

xxxx

She loves walking through the gardens at night, because the night is quiet and free from prying eyes. Because the air is cold and she can see her breath, because the cold is sharply _real _and the dark is sharply _still_ (and the hospital is always white-washed and too brightly lit). And the dark feels honest.

In the dark, she can almost forget that her world consists of a suitcase and a stack of books. The sun goes down and people forget their troubles (and forget their hum-drum lives and forget _themselves)_ and until the sun comes back up, she's not alone. She can breathe fresh air and taste freedom as strongly as anyone else in this town.

It swallows secrets. It hides fear. It makes her brave.

And she needs it tonight. She needs the darkness and the quiet and the secrets because her hard-won equilibrium has been overthrown, and everything she thought was true is in flux, and everyone she thought was with her is against her. She needs the darkness because questions pound at her mind with the insufferable persistence of a leaking tap. (Because the questions will drive her mad. They'll lock her up again. They'll ruin her life before it's even begun.)

But with Emma at her side, with a long woollen coat wrapped around her (and a scarf over her neck, and the collar popped up, and her hair down over her shoulders and earmuffs to ward off the chill), maybe she can find the answers she needs. Maybe she can save herself and salvage what she can, even if the universe is pitted against her.

Maybe she can't remember, but maybe she can _know_.

"Can I ask you something?" she asks, tucking her gloved hands under her arms.

"Yeah, sure."

"You're the Sherriff, right?"

Emma pats her belt, which is hidden by the black shirt that sticks out from beneath her leather jacket. "Last time I checked."

"Did you hear anything about Mister Gold…" She can't help a glance over her shoulder, as if he might be lurking in the shadows of skeletal trees, as if he might tilt his head and lean on his cane and hear every word. (Of course he isn't there. Of course there's nothing in the gardens but flowers and bushes and white-silver moonlight.)

"About Mister Gold?" Emma says. "I hear lots of things." It's a subtle prompt to continue. A helpful nudge, curious but nonthreatening.

Jane rubs her fingers against the fleecy inside of her mittens. She curls her hands into fists and holds her arms a little tighter around herself. "Did Mister Gold assault my father?"

Emma blows out a long breath, streaming a foggy cloud into the starlit sky. "Yeah," she says after a moment, "he did."

"So it's true, then."

"Yeah."

"Did you see it?"

"Yeah." Emma shrugs. Jane can't see her face (she doesn't want to look at her face, she only wants to stare at the ground and fix her eyes on the gravel path stretching out in front of them) but her voice sounds almost apologetic. "It wasn't pretty. And it probably would have been a lot worse I hadn't shown up."

It's strange, how hope can be extinguished with so few words. (Like dirt thrown on a fire, choking it of oxygen.)

It's strange, how she's wanted the truth for so long, and now forgetfulness seems comforting. (Like a blanket and a whitewashed room.)

It's strange, how the questions don't want to go away. (Like the nagging taste of sandwiches and the sound of a cane on a tiled floor.)

"Do you know why he did it?" Jane asks. It's the only option. Now that she's begun, the questions pile up at the back of her throat (like water pushing against a dam, clambering and swirling). She doesn't think she can stop them.

"Your dad stole from him."

"What did he steal?"

"A bunch of stuff. And that teacup."

"The one I broke?" (_Her talisman, _whatever that means_.)_

"Yeah."

It's a small comfort, at least. The florist steals the teacup and gets beaten half to death. She smashes it against a concrete wall, and Gold _apologizes_ to her.

They walk for a moment in silence. Their feet crunch on gravel, and the wind tries desperately to penetrate the knit of her sweater and swish around her neck.

"There was something else though," Emma finally says, "besides the cup." Jane doesn't answer (can't answer, because the questions are all scrambling to escape at once and she can't catch hold of any of them). But Emma takes her silence as permission. "He said something about 'her'? About Moe hurting 'her'? And that she was gone and never coming back?"

"Who?" Jane asks.

"Beats me," Emma says. "But I'd guess he was talking about you. From what I've heard, he thought you were dead."

"And he thought _my father_ killed me?"

Emma shrugs, and Jane is staring at the gravel but she knows Emma shrugs because her leather jacket creaks. "All I can say is that you weren't around when this all went down, and Gold sure seemed surprised to see you."

"The asylum," she says. It's the only other thing she remembers (and only just, only in glimpses of drug-addled nightmares, memories hidden in flashes of bleached memories and the scent of antiseptic).

"I guess so." Emma seems at a loss, voice riddled with almost-skepticism the heaviest kind of resignation. "I don't really know. It's kind of a long story."

"So is that why you don't like… him? Moe?" It seems strange to call him 'my father' in front of Emma, when Emma frowns or tenses or huffs a sigh every time the florist's name is mentioned. (Or when Jane wants nothing but to hide in the library every Wednesday and wonder why she dislikes _her father_ more than the man who assaulted him with a cane.)

"No. I don't like Moe because he's thrilled that you have amnesia."

Jane stops. "He is?"

Emma's pace slows, and she turns around to look Jane in the eye, brow creased. "You can't tell? He practically danced a jig when I phoned to tell him what happened."

"Why would he—?" And then she understands. Dots connect in her mind like those puzzles in the back of children's colouring books and everything makes sense. "Mister Gold. He's happy because I'm not dating Mister Gold."

"Truthfully, I'm sure he's not the only one… but most people wouldn't want your memory wiped because of it." Emma shrugs. Her jacket creaks again, and she buries her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "And I have a serious bone to pick with him. Call me old fashioned, but I think a girl should be able to able to date who she wants without fear of getting kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?"

"You know, it's—" Emma looks to the sky, as if trying to search the heavens for an appropriate response. "What I mean is that—"

"It's a long story?" Jane offers.

Emma smiles in relief. "Yeah. It really, really is." She pushes her hair from her face and sighs. "But the short version," she says, tucking her hands in the back pocket of her jeans, "is that Storybrooke is weird. And the longer you stay, the crazier it gets, so you might as well get used to things now." She gives Jane a smile and an apologetic sort of half-shrug, and starts walking along the path, heading towards the fork that leads back to the car.

Jane follows close behind.

(The town is crazy.)

The car is in sight, waiting in the moonlight like a black and white ghost, before Jane musters up the strength to ask a final question.

(The town is _weird_.)

"Emma?"

(People are kidnapped and a woman named _Cora _has everyone running scared, and a man with a wound said something about a giant, and her shoulder was healed… and maybe she won't need to be locked up ever again.)

"Can I ask you a question?"

(And maybe she's not crazy after all.)

"Sure, but can you ask on the go? Granny's is about to close."

She tries to wait until they reach the car—she really does—but the questions are building up behind her tongue, and the wind rushes around her head, and her hands shake from cold and fear and excitement and—"Emma?"

Emma turns, keys in hand. "Yeah?"

"Do you believe in magic?"

To her credit, Emma doesn't drop the keys. She doesn't laugh. She does nothing but stare at Jane with her eyebrows slightly raised and her lips curling into an almost-smile, as if remembering something funny and unbelievable and sad all at once. "If you'd asked me a year ago I'd have said no," she says.

"I'm not asking you a year ago," says Jane. "What changed your mind?"

"Magic," she says, and her voice is so quiet it nearly gets swept away by the wind.

Jane's unravels her scarf and the cold hits her neck, but she doesn't care because she can barely breathe. "Are you saying—?"

"Yeah."

"—Magic is real?"

"Oh yeah."

"So I actually saw… what I saw."

"Yeah."

"And that means Mister Gold can—"

The only thing Emma can say is, "Yeah."

And the only thing Jane can say is, "Wow."

"Well, now you know." Emma flips the keys around in her hand, punctuating the air with clinking metal. She blows out a long breath. "Sorry it took so long to tell you."

"But you did tell me," she says. "Thanks."

They walk to the car in silence, and Emma unlocks the doors. "Hey, you okay?"

It's a lot to digest (but she isn't crazy). She has some thinking to do and a phone call to make (but she has time for all that, and now she has answers, and it's a start).

Jane tucks her chin into her scarf and nods.

"So are we still getting hot chocolate?"

She climbs into the passenger's seat and says, with the tiniest hint of a smile (and a large dose of irony), "Yeah."

* * *

**A/N**: Hey everyone! Thanks again for reading. :) I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I know there was no Gold, but Belle-not!Belle-Jane has a few issues to work out, so thanks for being patient. I can promise you Gold in the next two chapters, so hang tight. Thank you so much for the great response I've been getting. The feedback is so great and everyone's been so understanding of my homework load and everything. Wow. Thanks so much. Also, speaking of homework... LAST ASSIGNMENT DUE TOMORROW. Which means, you'll be getting long-overdue review replies really really soon! I'm sorry it took me so long. But the end is in sight, and you will get replies, darnit. -Regina voice- If it's the last thing I do.

Also, AChippedCupofChai made me an AWESOME graphic for the story! I made it the story cover, but it's pretty small- so if you'd like to see it bigger, head over to my profile. I have a link there. :)

Thank you again!


	9. Chapter 9

She watches Mister Gold from the window, and wonders if he notices. The day is foggy and bleak—warming air and cold damp concrete, everything a disinterested grey—and from this distance he's little more than a murky black shape.

He's lit by a bevy of lamps positioned haphazardly all over his shop (though she wonders if it's really as haphazard as she thinks, or if maybe he has a reason behind everything he does, if maybe it's a magic spell or a secret pattern or simply the best use of shelf space), and he must be busy with something because he's ferried at least ten or fifteen items into the back of his shop since she started watching.

She feels a bit uneasy, staring at him. Observing him, knowing he could look up at any moment and see her. But she _needs_ to do this (her courage is still only a fledgling thing, still only taking its first steps on wobbly legs). She needs to hear the truth from his lips (soaked in a gentle Scottish accent and the weariness of grief) and she needs to hear his reasons (even if his reasons are excuses) and she needs to hear his side of the story (even if it leaves her hopeless and endlessly disappointed).

She needs to phone him because the prospect frightens her.

(And she doesn't want to be frightened any longer.)

With steady determination, she pulls her cellphone from her pocket. (She's wearing a light grey skirt, and a white cardigan over a blue blouse—a lovely robin's-egg colour that reminds her of the sky and the outdoors and freedom). She flips her phone open and jams her thumb into the 'dial' button before she has time to change her mind.

It rings.

It rings _forever_.

It rings _forever_, and as she watches, a slim black shape emerges from the back of the shop. (All straight suit-lines and grace, despite his limp.) The shape lifts something small from the counter to its ear, and a voice at the other end of the phone says, "Hello?"

For a moment, she forgets how to speak. She stares at the window, and he doesn't seem to see her because the shape's head is tilted down towards the floor like it's listening very hard, and she tucks her free hand up inside the sleeve of her white cardigan. She breathes.

"Hello?" the voice says again.

And she says, "Hi."

There's a pause.

And then she says, "It's me."

"Yes," Mister Gold's voice says. "I know."

"How?" (Maybe it's magic, maybe he has a spell on her or on his shop, or maybe he's watching her and she just can't see because the fog makes everything so indistinct—)

"You're the only one who has this number."

"Oh." Heat creeps up her neck and flushes her cheeks. She smiles and shakes her head at her runaway thoughts (as if all her mind needs is a good scolding to settle down).

In the pause that follows, he moves closer to the window, and she can see he has his free hand pressed against his open ear, to block out all noises but the telephone. His cane must be hanging on the counter, or in the back of his shop, and his limp worse than usual. (She wonders if it's still painful for him to walk, or merely something healed-but-never-fixed, like a badly set bone or a knee replacement.) He draws up close to the glass, until she can almost see the greyness of his hair against the blackness of his suit (the murkiest flash of red in his tie).

She waves.

Awkwardly, as if unsure how to respond, he waves back.

"Is everything alright?" he asks.

She wants to say yes (to reassure him, because he sounds so worried and she imagines his jaw is tight and his forehead creased, and she's _fine_), but it would be a lie. Everything is not alright, in fact. Everything is not alright because her father was beaten half to death with a cane (even if he did steal a teacup), and someone kidnapped her (and she doesn't even remember), and she still lives in a hospital room (because she's afraid of being alone).

But she doesn't want to say no, either.

And so she shrugs, and smiles a short little smile as if she's talking to Rub, and says, "Things are getting better." And at least that's the truth, if only a part of it.

"Good," he says, and there's a brightness to his tone that defies the inclement weather. "That's excellent. I'm… very happy for you, Jane."

She doesn't doubt it. He sounds happy. He probably looks happy (though his eyes probably stay sad, and maybe it's better that she can't see them from here). And maybe she could be happy too, except that she remembers the reason for her call.

She remembers the hollowness in her father's eyes, the hatred lighting them up like kerosene—and the warmth in her stomach turns hollow, like nausea or the moment of weightlessness before falling down the stairs. Her smile turns to a frown and she bites her lip and looks away from the window.

"If I ask you something," she says, after a long moment of silence (borne with admirable patience by the man on the other side of the street), "will you tell me the truth? Even if you don't like it?"

"Yes," he says, and it surprises her because there is almost no hesitation in his voice. "Haven't I always?"

"Yes," she says back. "That's why I'm calling you."

"What do you want to know?"

"Do you promise?" she asks. "Before I ask you, you need to promise." He shouldn't have to. He hasn't lied to her. He hasn't hidden things from her. He told her he loved her from the first day they met, he spoke of magic like a madman and bared his soul and apologized and told her she was brave. But she needs the assurance, because she isn't brave—not yet, (and maybe he did tell one lie to her, after all).

"I promise," he says. His voice trembles, but the silhouette in the shop window stands tall.

"Did you harm my father?"

A moment's pause. Steady breathing on the other side of the phone. And then, "Yes."

"Why?"

"He stole from me."

"Do you often assault people who steal from you?"

"People don't often steal from me."

"Why did he do it?" she asks.

"He owed me a debt." The figure in the window (the distant, hazy Mister Gold) rubs its face and sets its hand on something like a globe. "He was late in his payment. In return, I took his van and his means of paying me back."

"Is that everything?"

"No."

"I want to know," she says.

And so he tells her.

He speaks slowly, cautiously, as if every word hurts and he has to drag the story out through clenched teeth. As if he totters on the edge of self-control, and the only way he can make it through is by sheer force of will. (As if it's a reluctant gift to her, and he holds it out with open hands, even as it burns his palms.) Straight forward and direct and worlds apart from the tapestry of falsehoods she's grown accustomed to.

She's not sure if he's making up for lost time, or trying to pay some sort of cosmic debt, or if he hopes it will make her remember(or if he just feels she deserves it), but she doesn't doubt his honesty.

He tells her how the mayor lied to him. How Belle left and never came back, and the mayor said _her father_ had driven her to suicide (when in reality there were endless years of nothingness, of blank captivity and concrete and a bone-deep chill). How Mister Gold had blamed himself—and though he doesn't tell her this directly, she can hear it in his voice and the careful phrasing of his words. (When he says he blamed her father, when he says 'it was his fault', it sounds like he's saying 'it was my fault'.) She learns how he took her father to the cabin, and tied him up, and struck him.

She learns of his pain, and his anger, and the panic he felt when the cup was gone, because it is all he has of her (all he _had_ of her, and the past tense is her fault though he never accuses her). And she learns of the mystery woman, of the unknown and elusive 'her' in Emma's story. He missed her (misses her) and he loved her (loves her).

(And he doesn't say that out loud either, but his voice sounds like the sadness lurking behind his brown eyes.)

When his story ends, they stand in silence for a long while. Cool air bleeds through the glass, chilling her arm even through her cardigan.

She feels vulnerable beside the window, exposed and open (like standing beside the town line, instead of the warmth of her library). She feels too close, even though there's a street between her and his shop, and too visible, though she's likely distorted into a blurry human-esque shape by the rain running down the window.

He's sorry.

But even sorry can't stop her fear.

Even the truth doesn't mask the sound of muffled thumps pounding in her ears (heartbeats that sound like a cane against flesh and bone), or dispel the sounds of screaming, or erase the memory of cruelty scrawled across his face (eyes black and teeth bared and she's seen that look before, his cane pressed across the windpipe of the fallen pirate). Even kindness can't keep her hands from trembling, or quell the flashbacks when they rise up like bubbling pitch and roll over her with sticky, inescapable force.

And maybe his eyes are just as sad as hers, if she could see them, and maybe he's fighting tears, and maybe he's sorry… but intentions don't mean much when her father wears a neck brace and struggles to pay off medical bills.

Very quietly, very deliberately, she takes a step back from the window. (She's not running away. It's a tactical retreat.)

"I have to go," she says.

"Of course," he says. Resigned. Voice too-calm and too-still, like he expects it. (And maybe he does, because maybe leaving is all that ever happens between them.)

"Thank you for telling me," she says.

"Jane, I'm sorry—" But she can't stand to hear it another time (her collection of apologies is a burden, a regret-heavy suitcase she carries with her everywhere, and she doesn't want to be the cause of another heartbreak), and so she pulls the phone away from her ear and snaps it shut with an audible 'clack'.

The hazy-Gold-silhouette lowers its phone and turns away from the window in silence. Without a single glance back at her, it limp-steps around the counter and into the back of its shop. She still has more questions—but for now they cower in the corner of her mind, along with the rest of her thoughts.

She spends the rest of the afternoon in a corner in a beanbag chair, clutching tight to a battered copy of Jane Eyre and not reading it.

xxxx

It takes two days for her bravery to slink back. But when it does, and the questions return like swarms of sand fleas in the corners of her mind, she dials his number.

"Hello?"

"It's me."

"Jane," he says. He speaks with a mix of reverence and surprise (and it sounds so much better than resignation, so much less painful than the hurt of an abruptly ended telephone call). "I didn't expect to hear from you again."

She's not sure if he means 'so soon' or 'ever'.

"How can I help you?" he asks. (It's a formal question. Business-arrangement speech, and he must be comfortable using it because it flows from his mouth without meaning or pain.)

"I… have another question."

"I'll answer as best I can," he says.

She pauses. Draws a breath. She doesn't think he's in his shop, but she stands beside the window anyway. Just beside the wall, just out of sight. Theoretically close to him and close to the outside world, but tucked away tightly behind locked doors and the library's as-of-yet unmoved 'closed' sign.

"Emma said my father kidnapped me?"

She asks it as a question because it sounds absurd, even in her head. Her father kidnap her? Her father tie her up and drag her away? He's insensitive and heavy and foolish, perhaps, biased against a man he barely knows—but abduction?

(Then again, he did steal from Mister Gold. Perhaps the distance between crimes is shorter than she thinks.)

She can't see Mister Gold, but the silence makes her think that his hand must be white-knuckled on his cane and his teeth must be clenched.

"He did." His words sound torn to bloody ribbons by the tension in his voice.

"He did," she repeats.

"Yes."

She puts her hand on the table, palm down, to steady herself.

She can hear the sound of footsteps and vehicles over the phone. He must be walking through town somewhere, along the sidewalk with the phone to his ear. Silent and waiting for her to speak.

"Why?" she finally asks.

Maybe there's a good reason (for kidnapping). Maybe her father can be excused (for abduction). Maybe it's all a misunderstanding (like assault).

Or—and she's been preparing herself for this possibility as much as any other— maybe Wednesday night dinners are terrible because her father is terrible. And she's wary and uncomfortable but maybe she should be afraid of him. Maybe she's been afraid of the wrong man the entire time. (Maybe the real monster isn't the man with the sneer and the cane, but the man who feeds spaghetti to a woman he once abducted and pretends nothing ever happened.)

"Your father," Gold says slowly, after a long moment of chewing on the words, "wanted to make you forget me." (He thinks it's his fault. Just like he thinks the gunshot and lost memories are his fault. His voice like a thousand apologies and a thousand regrets.) "You left my house one morning," he says, "and you didn't come back."

She rubs her thumb against the table. Her skin squeaks against the polished wood, sliding across in little sticky jumps and skips.

"And what happened?" she asks.

"We found you."

"And he still blames you for taking me away." (This time it's not a question at all.)

"I imagine he does." There's an edge to his voice, a gravelly undertone that makes her think of bared teeth and raised hackles.

She bites her bottom lip and scratches at a dent in the table. "He says you imprisoned me."

A long silence. More cars and footsteps and the sound of a steady wind hissing across the phone.

"It was a long time ago," he says, finally. "We made a deal and you agreed to stay with me. You kept your word. It wasn't personal."

"And then it was."

"And then it was," he agrees. "So I let you go."

Because he loved her (loves her). Because he respected her (respects her). Because "her own good" is her own choice (and he gave her a key, not a lock).

"I _am_ sorry."

"I know," she says.

Over the phone, the sound of a closing door shuts out the sounds of the street. "Jane," he says, "I'm afraid I have a meeting to attend."

"Okay," she says.

"Would you like me…" He hesitates for a brief moment, as if trying to gauge interest by the breadth and depth of her silence. "…would you like me to call you back?"

"I don't think so," she says. She can hear the tiny sigh—the resigned exhale through his nose—and it twists in her stomach like a knife. She doesn't mean to stomp his hopes, but (like a child on a sandcastle) it seems she just can't help herself. And he's so quick to retreat, like he'd leave and never return, if she only asked. (He leaves like it's so easy to do.)

"Of course," he says. He breathes in and she can tell he's going to say goodbye.

"Wait." There is silence on the other end of the phone—but no dial tone. He's listening. She stares through the window at the 'closed' sign hanging on his darkened shop. "Are you free tomorrow morning?"

"I can be."

"I'll call you at eight."

She thinks, for a brief moment, she can hear his smile through the phone.

* * *

**A/N: ** THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR READING AND REVIEWING. I really appreciate it, as always. Reviews always brighten my day. Thank you all for the good wishes in regards to my school, too! I'm done my assignments for the year- now all I have left is studying for exams. And then in about two weeks, I'll be done. Anyway, all that's not tremendously important except that it means MORE TIME FOR WRITING. And also answering reviews. Which I will do shortly. If I haven't spoken to you within the week, thanking you for reviewing, please send me a PM and kick me into next week. Seriously. I have no more excuses. (Except laziness. xD)

A big thanks, as always, to Anti-Kryptonite, and thanks to Chippedcupofchai as well, for giving me some initial feedback and helping me through some of my drama. Much obliged, darling!


	10. Chapter 10

She's tired of spending every waking moment in the library (even if it is soothing and even if it is _hers_), so she walks to the pier when the light is still grey to watch the sun rise over the ocean. Except for the sound of birds and the muffled footsteps of early morning joggers, she steals through the morning air in silence, alone with the steady drumbeat of her thoughts. The world smells of salt and an impending storm. Knots of clouds hover dark and distant over the horizon, painted in orange and red.

The wind blows cold with winter's slow retreat, but it whistles like freedom around her head and tangles playfully in her hair (and it could be midwinter for all she cares, because, in this moment, she never wants to go inside again).

And so she sits on a bench despite the threatening storm, wrapped in a jacket against the backdrop of glistening ocean waves, and waits.

When the clock tower clangs eight (gigantic pealing _Belles_ like musical thunder), she dials Mister Gold.

(It's easier than it was yesterday.)

He picks up on the first ring.

"Jane," he says.

"Good morning," she says. She can hear the wind crackling through the phone, and she flips the collar of her jacket up so it covers the bottom of her face. She struggles for words (because so often her world is only silence), and bites her lip long enough to grasp at the edges of conversation. "How… was your meeting?"

"Uneventful." Mister Gold seems at a similar loss, but he's quicker to recover. A brief second later, to combat the lull of silence between them, he adds, "But I could tell you about it if you want."

She shakes her head (and remembers with a tiny smile that he can't see her). "No. That's okay."

"And your day?"

It's small talk. It's comforting and normal and completely inane, (and if they don't redirect the conversation they'll lose all control and start discussing the weather or latest news from sports), and in some ways it feels completely wrong.

And completely right.

Right to hear his voice. Right to talk to him without the perpetual awareness of violence. Right to talk to him without her father's accusations hanging over her shoulders (because a man who kidnapped her lost the privilege to tell her what to do and what to think). Right to talk to him like they're both ordinary human beings. And maybe it's strange to be discussing uneventful days with Mister Gold, but who's going to stop them?

"My day was fine," she says.

"Good."

"But that's not what I called to talk about."

A pause. (She can imagine the twitch of his lips.) "I expect not," he says.

"I still have questions."

"Of course." (She can almost see the momentary flash of amusement in his eyes. Picture the tilt of his head like an acquiescence.) "What do you want to know?"

"I—" She's had hours to prepare, but her breath catches and her lips fail to form the words, and for a moment she sits (inhaling in the salty, stormy air, like she can so easily replace fear with oxygen) and tries to think of the best way to phrase her question. But she's going to ask him about something that shouldn't exist (something crazy). And there is no best way. So she clears her throat and says, "I want to know about magic."

"What about it?"

Three words, and the edges of the world seem to brighten. A weight off her back, (a lungful of fresh ocean air and maybe it _can_ drive away fear), because she doesn't have to explain herself. She doesn't have to fight for her right to know. No games, no pretending, no playing dumb. She saw magic (and she isn't crazy). Magic is real (and Mister Gold or Rumple or Rumplestiltskin knows all about it).

Magic exists (and the image that haunts her dreams and her waking moments of terror—the closed doors of an asylum and the pinch of a needle beneath her skin—evaporates into the air around her and flies away on the wind).

"It's real, then." Not a question anymore, though it has haunted her for so many days.

"Yes."

"And you… have it?"

"I can use magic, yes."

"Can anyone else?"

"Regina. Cora." (And that's why everyone's so terrified of her, perhaps. Why she's so dangerous.) "Mother Superior and several of the nuns, to smaller degrees. And, as it happens, Miss Swan."

Jane blinks. "Emma?"

"She's something of a novice, but yes—Miss Swan possesses considerable potential."

"She didn't tell me," Jane says.

"No," Gold says. "I don't believe she would have. I don't think she quite believes it herself."

"How do you get magic?"

"Miss Swan appears to have been born with it. Cora and Regina learned it."

"And you?"

He pauses. For a long time—longer than she expects. She listens to the rush of the waves and the sound of his breathing on the other end of the phone, and waits.

Finally, he says, "I acquired it in a deal. A long time ago."

"Did you get a good price?" she asks.

"Not particularly."

"Was it worth it?"

He only says, "Next question."

She doesn't have time to dwell on his reluctance for more than a moment, or pick apart the grains of tragedy and remorse in his voice, because a barrage of questions sweep over her curiosity and she finds herself helpless to stop them.

Is he powerful? _Yes_.

Do other people in Storybrooke know about it? _Yes_.

Is magic dangerous? _Yes_.

Is that why they're afraid of him? _Partly_.

Did Belle know about magic? _Yes._

What did Belle think about it? _Next question_. (And the ache of his words sinks down into the pit of her stomach.)

He tells her that magic can't bring back the dead, can't make someone love you. He tells her magic is power. He tells her magic always comes with a price. He tells her of deals and costs and potions, of protection wards and healing (and apologizes when she confides that the fireball still gives her nightmares). He tells her all she wants to know.

Finally, when her mouth is dry and her fingers are numb from holding the phone to his ear, she wraps herself in bravery (like a golden scarf) and asks him one last question.

"Can you show me?"

"Magic?" (And she guesses that Belle must not have liked it, because his reaction sounds surprised and suspicious and worried all at once.)

"Yes. Can you show me magic?" She speaks slowly, clearly, because she wants him to understand (and because the wind is getting colder and she has to fight off a shiver).

"If that's what you want."

She's considered the question long enough (since hot chocolate with Emma and the blazing relief of her own sanity) to have the answer ready when he asks. "It is."

"Then I will," he says. "But not today."

She's waited this long for answers; she can wait a little longer for proof.

So she says, "Thank you." The list of things to thank him for is almost as long as the list of reasons she should fear him. (And it's growing every day, with each new phone call and each answer checked off her list.) "For everything."

He gives a mirthless chuckle that crackles over the phone (or maybe that's just the lightning drawing closer, flashing interference as the clouds roll steadily onward). "You might want to rethink your answer, my dear. 'Everything' is a fairly broad category."

"For being patient, then."

"Of course."

Over the ocean, sky and water alike churning green and blue-grey, the clouds flicker with electricity.

"There's a storm coming," she says. As if to support her claims, a low rumble of thunder shudders through the air. "I should get back."

"By all means," he says. "But… may I offer a suggestion before you go?"

"Please do."

"A mobile phone's greatest asset," he says, "is its mobility." He sounds nervous, wrapped up in tense anticipation (and not-quite-hope). His hands, no doubt, wringing the life out of his cane, or tapping on the back of the telephone—or perhaps even oddly still (because she's noticed he can be still sometimes, too, like movement would undermine his earnest plea). "It remarkably allows one to walk and talk at the same time."

A few old leaves, left-over from the winter and liberated from the melted snow, skitter along the boardwalk in front of her.

Very quietly, (and she can hear the uncertainty in his voice), he says, "Don't hang up yet. Please."

Her hands shake (from the storm, or the cold, or her own inhibitions, or because _she wants to say yes_, she isn't sure). "Okay." He breathes out and laughs all at once, a tiny _huff_ of air barely audible over the roar of the wind. "But if it starts raining, I'm closing the phone and running."

"Deal," he says. And then, "How are things going with the library?"

She smiles and stands from the bench. The first drops of rain hit her face. She tugs her collar a little higher, and holds the phone a little closer, and says, "Great."

"Tell me about it."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

For the first time she can remember (and perhaps not the last, perhaps this is the start of something new and comfortable and familiar), Mister Gold walks her home.

xxxx

The storm lasts most of the morning.

The storms that come after, (strung behind like pearls on a great thundering necklace), last all day.

By lunch, murky puddles flow like rivers down sidewalks and into sewer grates. By dinner, the weather reports warn of high winds and flash floods. By the time she walks back to the hospital, collar pulled tight against her neck, she sloshes through two inches of water and half of Storybrooke is without electricity.

When hospital visiting hours are over and the tiny gift-shop closes, she finds herself in the tv lounge in socks and a house coat, staring wide-eyed into the heart of the storm and listening to rain pound the window like an angry lover. She dozes in the armchair, slipping in and out of a fitful sleep that breaks apart at the first thunderclap. (And when she turns on the television to drive away her fear, it answers only with static.)

And so she sits in darkness, in the blacked out television room surrounded by dark glass, watching lightning illuminate the swirling clouds (and the skeletal trees outside, and the swinging electrical wires, and the rushing water, and the streaks of rain on the window). She rubs her hands together and curls herself up in her housecoat and hums to herself and paces the floor—she does everything she can to keep her heart from bursting out of her chest—and then she calls Mister Gold.

It rings.

It rings and rings and the thunder shakes the glass and she can see her hand shaking in the flashes of lightning… and he answers.

"Jane," he says.

"I'm sorry—" Her voice shakes, stutters, cuts out on her (like the electricity to half of Storybrooke). And she's cold, freezing because the housecoat and socks aren't enough against the chill of the glass and the chill of exhaustion and the chill of linoleum underfoot. (The far-too familiar chill of terror.)

"Are you alright?"

"Yes. No. I—don't—I don't know."

"Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head. Her hair clings to her cheeks (like spiderwebs against her skin) and she bats it away. "No. I'm not… hurt, no." She holds tight to the phone with both hands and presses it against her face until the plastic bites into her ear.

"Are you in danger?"

"No."

She can hear his sigh of relief over the phone.

Lightning flashes and thunder rolls, and she bites her lip (because pain helps her focus, helps her keep her head when the rest of the world is cartwheeling around her).

"Mister Gold," she says, and her voice fades to a whisper, until she can barely hear it over the rain spattering the windows. "I'm afraid."

"Of the storm?"

(Of everything.)

"Yes," she says. She swallows and rubs a hand across her mouth. "When it stormed, sometimes, the basement—my cell— would flood." Her fingers drum a frantic beat against her lips and she begins to walk, pacing the length of the window and staring at the floor (because she can remember water rising over her ankles, and the emotions are too strong, too vivid because she has so few memories to block them out).

"Oh, sweetheart," he says, but she doesn't think he intends to, because he's never said it before— because it's nearly three AM and she shouldn't have called him (but she isn't afraid of him anymore and she doesn't want to be alone).

She leaves the windows and crawls into the armchair, curling her legs up beneath her chin. "The water would start coming through the window," she says. "They'd restrain me, and sedate me, and move me—and I can never remember anything about the room except it was always dark and smelled like mold. And the pipes dripped. Maybe it was a storage room, I don't know."

He doesn't speak, but there's a hitch in his breath (like anger or sadness or maybe fear, maybe fear just like her).

"Sometimes they wouldn't even move me. I'd be stuck on the cot until morning, and it was cold, and—"

They'd come in the next morning with buckets and mops (and sometimes pipes and tubes and 'shop-vacs'). And they'd try to fix the windows, and the nurses would keep her back from the workmen like she'd bite them, like she was some sort of animal. And maybe the window would keep the rain out for a few months. Maybe a year. But inevitably, like everything else, the seal would break.

And the water would come again.

She feels her voice break and she hears her tears hit the upholstery and she doesn't try and stop it.

"Are you alone?" he asks quietly, after a long rumble of thunder chokes her with a sob. (It's too late for this. She's been up for too many hours and she's just learned about magic and maybe if the storm just came a few days later she would be fine.)

"Yes," she whispers.

"Do you want me there, with you?"

(Yes.)

She shakes her head. "I just need— to hear you. I just need to know that I'm not going to be left alone." (Alone in the dark. And the water.)

"I'm not going to leave you, Jane," he says, so quietly she can hardly hear him over the crash of rain. "Not now and not ever."

She wipes tears from her cheek with her sleeve. "I don't want to be afraid anymore."

"Hush, love, shh. It's alright." His voice sounds soft, quiet and soothing and gentle, (spring rain on a patio instead of the gale that roars outside).

The wind changes direction and whips twigs and random debris against the glass. She takes a deep breath to remind herself that the water is outside, and she is inside, and Mister Gold is on the other side of the phone, and the storm will be over in the morning (and she will be _fine_.) She pulls her housecoat a little closer. "I thought I had a choice. I thought I could just… do brave things, and after a while I'd just stop being scared."

"Do the brave thing and bravery will follow," he says.

"Exactly," she says. "But I _am_ trying. I _am_ doing brave things. So where's my bravery?"

"Maybe it just takes… time."

"I'm tired of waiting." (It's driving her mad.) "Sitting around in a hospital, hoping for someone to wave a magic wand and make it all better. I can't live like this."

"You're healing."

"I'm hiding." She takes a deep breath and tucks her hair behind her ear. She cradles the phone against her face and wills warmth back into her fingers. "I can't stay here anymore."

(If she isn't imagining it, if it isn't an illusion like the rain on the windows casting imaginary floods onto the floor tiles, she hears his heart crack down the middle.) "Here?"

"The hospital."

He breathes out.

"I've stayed too long already." She hadn't even realized it, but memories of the asylum lurk at the back of her mind, hiding in the whitewashed walls and the sound of nurses chatting in the halls. In the smell of antiseptic and the clink of syringes on metal trays. Clawing at her. Pressing in on her. (Making her _crazy_.) "I need to leave."

"When?"

"Today. Tomorrow. As soon as I can."

"Do you plan to stay in the library?"

"…is that alright?"

"Perfectly. I'll have someone clean it for you in the morning."

"I can do it," she says.

"And I can hire someone."

"And I can clean my own apartment, thank-you."

Her lips twitch into a smile, the first in what seems like an eternity, and she thinks his might too. (Either that or he's rolling his eyes, wondering how he managed to involve himself with a stubborn unstable terrified amnesiac.) "Very well."

They lapse into silence, and the rain begins to slow, and exhaustion weighs her down like a concrete slab.

She has questions.

Now that she knows about magic, about abduction and her father—now that the thunder is rumbling away and her heart has stopped jumping about in her chest— she wants to know the mundane details of her life. If he's the land lord, or if the town pays for the upkeep of the building (because there are a few things that need repairing before the library opens). What her salary will be, and when the town will start paying her, (because Emma doesn't know and Gold is the only one familiar enough with the town charter to figure things out). When she can open the library (because maybe if she has a job, she can reclaim her life, bit by bit).

But it's the middle of the night, and her mind grows foggier by the second (and it sounds like Mister Gold might be falling asleep on the other end of the phone), and now is not the time for those questions.

(Now is the time for a more important one.)

"What should I call you?"

He pauses for a moment. "Mister Gold, if you'd like."

"Do you want me to call you Mister Gold?" She will if he wants, but (after tonight, especially) it just sounds so formal. So cold. More like the pawnbroker or a friendly neighbour than a man who would wake up at three AM just so she could hear his voice.

"It's up to you."

"Well then, do you want me to call you Rumplestiltskin?"

He sounds pained. "No, actually, I think I'd rather you didn't."

(Too much like Belle.)

"What, then?"

"It's… " He takes a moment, and takes a breath, and then he says, "Rum. You can call me Rum."

She smiles. "Okay." She takes a breath and uncurls her legs, placing her socked feet deliberately on the (dry) tiled floor. "I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay," he says.

They say their goodnights.

She calls him Rum, and he calls her Jane, (and she imagines his eyes say _Belle_).

xxxx

She wakes up at ten and phones him as soon as her teeth are brushed.

"It's me."

"Hey."

They exchange small talk. His business. The library. The newest breakfast special at Granny's, and the field of magic beans grown by a giant and a pack of dwarves in the outskirts of town. (They specifically avoid the topic of weather, which is sunny and also pretending to ignore last night's chaos.)

She pushes her way out of the hospital and starts down the street.

"I… have a question," she says.

"Of course." (To his credit, he doesn't seem annoyed, or frightened, or anything but willing.)

"W—" She clears her throat and side-steps a puddle, hitching her purse further up on her shoulder. "Would you like to get a hamburger?" A pause. "With me?" Another pause. "We… uh… never got to finish ours. Or order them, really."

She's taken so much from him. And if she can cheer him by sharing a few hours over hamburgers, she will. It's time to give something back (although if she's perfectly honest, this might still classify as taking because she wants it too).

His silence stretches on until her ears burn, and she ducks her head to hide a rising blush on her face from the passers-by on the sidewalk.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes," he says. There's a smile in his voice.

"Good," she says. "Because I'm starving. Meet me at Granny's in an hour?"

He stammers a yes and she hangs up the phone. She stops into Granny's on the way to the library and makes a reservation for two.

Maybe he isn't perfect. (And he still looks at her with _Belle_ ringing in his eyes.) Maybe he's dangerous, but not to her. (And he assaulted her father and tried to kill a pirate and held fire in his hands.) Maybe he's old and crippled and everyone in the town hates him. (And he weighs her down with apologies and carries grief in his sad brown eyes.)

But Belle would have forgiven him, and Jane owes him enough to try.

* * *

**A/N:** EXAMS ARE OVER THIS WEEK.

AND THEN FREEDOM.

THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS AND THE SUPPORT AND I WILL TALK TO YOU ALL SOON WHEN I HAVE TIMMMEEEEE. -flails around- much love to everyone, and a special thanks to Anti-Kryptonite for beta-ing and to ChippedCupofChai for the lovely graphic and helping me sort through some of the concerns I was having with this chapter. They're the best. Check 'um out (AK on and Chai on tumblr.)


	11. Chapter 11

They meet at Granny's for lunch, and discuss business.

Between bites of hamburger and crispy fries, they speak of investors, budgets, salaries, benefits—and she's amazed how animated he can be over topics she expected to find so droll. They meet for ice-cream the next day, and the day after that (she orders a milkshake and then a banana split but he never deviates from a plain vanilla cone), and he pulls out a briefcase full of documents. He circles and highlights various clauses with a fountain pen that probably costs more than her father makes in a month, and asks her to read carefully before she signs.

When he pauses to explain a phrase in detail, she follows the trail of his finger across the page and finds she trusts his suggestions more than she trusts her ability to decipher the legal jargon. She argues over money on principal (even though the number he names is more than adequate), and she signs with a ballpoint she keeps tucked behind her ear.

They ignore the press of people around them, and order endless cups of tea, and smile. And laugh. He tells jokes with a glint in his eye, and she offers him book recommendations for things he's never read and likely never will. (He distracts her. It's strange and not altogether unpleasant.)

By Wednesday, she has a contract and a salary. By Thursday, she begins cleaning her apartment. By Friday, she sets a date for the library's opening.

By the end of the week, she has newfound hope and bravery to spare…

And a deep, abiding fondness for plain vanilla ice cream cones.

xxxx

Granny's at noon, she tells him over the phone, and she slides into the booth nearest the door at precisely eleven forty-five. She buries her nose in a book and forces herself not to stare at the clock above the counter, forces herself not to count down the long minutes as noon marches ever closer. Forces herself not to bite her lip, not to drink all her iced-tea before her meal is even ordered, not to worry and fret as twelve o'clock comes and goes and leaves her sitting solitary in a booth by the door.

She reads _The Three Musketeers_, and wishes she was as brave as D'Artagnan.

She's not.

But maybe she's as brave as she needs to be, so when the door finally opens and a burst of fresh air brushes against the back of her legs, she spins around in her seat and watches her father step into the diner. She's as brave as she needs to be, so she waves him over. (Not that he couldn't have found her himself. She wears a dress the colours of the sky at dawn, pale blue with starbursts of orange and yellow and deeper blue spread across it like rising fires, and in a half-empty diner she's not exactly camouflaged.)

Moe approaches the table with one arm held behind his back, looking sheepish and rubbing the back of his neck, and she gestures to the empty seat across from her. She smiles.

He smiles back (and it's little more than a hesitant, nervous little twitch of the lips, just like hers) and slides into the booth, a little awkwardly. He pulls his hand from behind his back and tucks it under the table before she can see what he's holding. "Sorry I'm late," he says. "Lost track of time, I guess."

She nods. Glances at her page number and then lays her book down on the red vinyl beside her. "That's okay. You're here now."

"Thanks for inviting me," he says. "It's been a while."

She has no answer for him. They both know why she hasn't been answering his calls. They both know why she pulled back. They both know why she hasn't come to dinner on Wednesdays for weeks, and it doesn't bear repeating.

"I, uh, brought these for you," Moe says after a too-long pause. He pulls a bouquet of daisies from under the table and reaches them across to her, narrowly avoiding dunking the stems in her iced-tea.

She takes them and smiles. A genuine smile this time. A smile of a woman given flowers by her father. (A smile because maybe he's trying.)

"I wasn't sure what kind you liked," he pauses. (She hears an unspoken "anymore" in the tone of his voice.) He gives a little shrug and pulls his hand back. "But I figured it's hard to go wrong with daisies."

"Thank you," she says. They're held together by a clear elastic band around the stems, bright and cheerful and still moist with tiny droplets of water beading on the petals. She grasps a petal lightly between her fingers (a _he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not_ gestures that seems entirely appropriate considering the situation) and rubs it gently with the pad of her thumb before setting the bouquet on the bench beside her. "They're beautiful."

After Granny comes by to take their orders (she asks for lasagna, with soup and salad to start, and he gets the fish and chips), they make small talk.

They discuss his shop. The library. The storm. What she does in her free time and if she's ever been bowling (the answer is no—not yet).

It's gotten easier to fill the silence (a few outings with Rum for practice, and she can chat her way through almost anything), but even a thorough discussion of the weather can't dismiss the tension between them. News of his flower shop fills the remainder of their time as they wait on lunch, but it doesn't hide the awkward pauses, the nervous sips of his strong black coffee, her teeth catching the inside of her bottom lip or her fingers toying with the corners of her skirt.

"So I—uh—I got my first paycheque yesterday," she says.

He drains the rest of his coffee before setting his mug down on the table with a deep, ungraceful 'clink' of porcelain. He smiles and then laughs. "Ah, so you're buying, are you?"

It's a joke. (She doesn't know if he thinks it's funny or if he's just trying out levity like an ill-fitting jacket, but it falls flat.)

"Actually," she says, and it takes an effort to keep the quirk of her lips from sinking into a frown, "I was planning on it." She pats her purse, knowing it contains notes and a bank card belonging to 'Jane French', independence and freedom and proof of how far she's come. (She's not who she was. She's no longer a woman on a cot in a dark, flooding room—because now she's a woman who wears sky-blue and orange dresses, earns her own living, and takes her father out for lunch.)

"That's very kind of you, Belle—"

She blinks once and tries not to let him see her flinch.

"—but I was only teasing. You don't have to."

"I know," she says. "But I want to."

"You're sure?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I wasn't."

Maybe she's not as rich as Mister Gold. Maybe she only has a few weeks of working experience (that she can remember), but her pay is fair. She has few expenses—few needs besides food and funds for the occasional outing with Ruby—and she's more than capable of affording a meal for her father.

"Well, in that case, I suppose I could use a second cup of coffee."

"And you're more than welcome to it." Her lips twitch up, a little easier this time, and she pulls a paper napkin from the stack at the side of the table, smoothing the creases and folding it into a perfect square. "You can even have dessert."

He smiles and this time it creases his entire face; this time it lights up his eyes and opens his mouth and pulls a chuckle from somewhere deep in his chest. And it would have been so satisfying, (if she'd never heard of kidnapping). It would have been pleasant, (except that his eyes and his voice and his hands are heavy on her mind, like a ball and chain, like an anvil, like immovable metal doors with hinges that never break). It would have been everything she would have wanted, (but she can see the inevitability of his disappointment on the horizon, and it looks like an oncoming storm).

And so she merely smiles back. Doesn't laugh. Doesn't grab his hand, even though he rests it on the middle of the table like he desperately wants to rest his palm over her fingers and pretend she's still Belle.

"So," he says, and he pulls his hand back a few inches, fiddling with his empty coffee cup as if that were always his intention, "I guess you'll be opening the library soon."

"A few weeks," she says. She folds her square napkin in half, corner to corner, forming a triangle. "As long as everything goes according to plan. I'm trying to transfer the catalogue into the computer, but it's been… difficult."

"How so?"

She tucks the triangle beneath her glass of iced tea and rubs her palms on her skirt. "I don't… entirely remember how to use a computer?"

"I could always help you, if you need it. I'm no expert, but maybe—"

She shakes her head and lowers her gaze to the tabletop. "No, thank you. I already have someone helping me."

She can hear him shift on the bench, the groan of his weight against the vinyl, his little involuntary cough.

"Who's that, then?"

It's none of his business, and the wariness in his tone turns her stomach. But she's determined to give him another chance, (for her own sake, not his), and so she gives him the answer he asks for (because she has no right demanding honesty if she's unwilling to offer it).

"Emma," she says. She glances to the daisies at her side and tries to ignore his very obvious relief. Tries to focus on the good— and ignore the rising dread of what will happen when she _does_ tell him about Rum. (And she _will_ tell him. She'll tell him because he'll make his choice. And then she'll make hers.)

"That's… great," her father says.

"I'm so glad you approve."

"All I mean is that it's important to start your new life off on the right note. And with… everything going on…" He trails off and rubs his neck (and she thinks of his neck-brace, of doctor's bills and a gold handled cane). "I just think it's important to choose the right friends, that's all." He leans forward, and his hands are on the table again, reaching out to her (and she folds her hands on her lap and pretends not to notice). "This is your fresh start. Your chance to get your life in order, make the right choices. No complications, no distractions—"

"Complications?" She nearly laughs, but it's not funny. "Father, I…" She takes a breath, lifts a hand from her lap to hold it in front of her like a wall to hide behind. "My life," she says, making eye contact, blue on blue, "is a complication."

His smile fades. He searches her face, and he looks worried (or maybe just defensive) for the first time since handing her the daisies (as if flowers have erased the _complications_ and he thinks his sins have been absolved). "Belle, please, I didn't mean it like that."

"Stop calling me Belle," she says. She pulls another napkin from the stack and begins folding it. Lining up the corners, sliding her nails along the creases to crisp the edges.

"Then what do you want me to call you?"

"By my name? It's Jane now, by the way. Nobody else seems to have a problem remembering." (Only Mister Gold and his tragic brown eyes, but he's _trying_, and he's doing more than bringing her flowers and pretending nothing's changed.)

"I'm sorry," he says. "It takes some adjustment."

"I agree," she says. "It does." (More than he knows. Long nights and long weeks and endless months of adjustment.) "But if you want to be part of my life, you're going to have to accept it." He starts to stammer an apology, but she holds up her hand. (No more. Not unless he means it. Not unless he changes first.) "Please," she says. "Just… try."

He nods, lips pressed together in a thin line. "Of course. I'll try."

"Thank you." She reaches for her iced tea and hopes he doesn't notice her shaking hands. (Though she imagines it's hard to miss, with the ice cubes rattling like dice as she lifts it from the table and unsticks the folded napkin from the bottom of the glass.)

"I've disappointed you," he says, as soon as she lifts her drink to her lips. (And for a brief moment, she wishes she was with Leroy because his "special brand" of iced-tea would do wonders for her nerves.)

She finishes the tea before answering, before even allowing herself to process his words—tips the glass straight back and drains it to the dregs in a long swig that leaves her lungs screaming for air. And then she sets it back on the table, glass clinking and ice cubes shaking, and wipes her mouth with the triangle-folded napkin. "Father, I—"

She wants to tell him no. She wants to say 'of course not', and shake her head, and force a smile (like pretending she enjoys undercooked spaghetti and the heat of his palms on the back of her hands). But she stops. Because—maybe her expectations were unrealistic—but he _has_ disappointed her. Maybe she's being unreasonable, but she had hoped for someone who would help her and cherish her and respect her, (she wished for a father), and she's been trying to get away from Moe since the first day they met.

"I just thought it would be easier for you," she says, "considering all your talk of new starts. I suppose I'm just surprised you're holding so tightly to the past."

His brow creases, deepening the lines in his face. He rubs his jaw and stares into his coffee cup, and doesn't speak for a long moment. "Don't have much else to hold on to, I guess," he finally says. (The regret in his eyes tugs at her heartstrings, sends her stomach twisting—but she has momentum and bravery, and it's too easy to slide down into self-pity, and she bites her lip.) "And I thought you'd want to be Belle, no matter what."

(She does want to be Belle. But wanting and reality are two very different things.)

She sighs. Takes a breath.

"I lost my memories," she says. "The first thing I remember is waking up on the side of some road with a bullet in my shoulder. As far as I know, my whole life begins there. That _changes_ a person." She narrows her eyes and shakes her head and tries to understand his position—tries to understand how he can sit across from her and talk of his daughter in such pleasant terms (like Belle's just playing hide-and-seek and might come skipping back at any moment). Wonders how he can pull her close and wrap her in meaty, strong-armed hugs, and then systematically dismiss her every word (like she's a child, like she's brainless instead of just memoryless).

He just stares at her.

"I appreciate that you're trying to help, Father, but I'm not who I was. So if I need a new name to feel like a person instead of a walking memorial service, I hardly think that's too much to ask."

His eyes are shimmering, and he looks like she's stabbed him in the gut—but tears sting at the back of her eyes too, and if she could have feigned contentment for another second she would have kept her peace.

"I can be your daughter," she says. (And she wants to be. More than anything. She wants to smile at him and bring him casseroles and hold his hands without his fingers feeling like shackles around her wrists.) "But I can't replace the one you lost."

"You're right, of course." A pause. His thick finger wrapped around the handle of his coffee cup. A reluctant syllable dropping from his mouth. "Jane."

Any chance for further discussion vanishes instantly with the clink of dishes and Granny's emergence from the kitchens. She carries a pot of coffee in one hand and balances a tray expertly on the other. Lasagna and fish and chips and a tall iced tea (because in all the times Jane has visited Granny's, she's never ordered fewer than two glasses).

Jane wipes her eyes with the corner of her triangle napkin and clears her empty glass out of the way.

"Everything okay here?" Granny asks, when she gets close enough to the table to avoid shouting across the diner.

"Fine," Moe says.

Jane smiles and nods (and it's funny how much easier it is to make eye contact with Granny than with her own father).

Granny smiles and nods back (although her cheeriness is not entirely convincing), and lays the plates of food on the table, filling Moe's cup before gathering Jane's empty glass and folded napkins. "Well, enjoy. She catches Jane's eye and raises an eyebrow behind her circular glasses. "Let me know if you need anything."

"I will."

Her father drains half his coffee and pours vinegar on his chips. He picks up his cutlery and begins to cut into his food, and she wishes she still had an appetite.

She picks up her fork and places a new napkin (unfolded) across her lap and stares at her lasagna. It's red and orange and covered in melted cheese and surrounded by fresh salad, and it smells divine but she can't convince her stomach to agree, so she just cuts it with the side of her fork and takes a sip of her iced tea. (It leaves her mouth cold and her lips numb and the sour taste of lemon wrinkles her nose.)

The silence won't last. It can't.

So she decides to break it.

"Father?"

He looks up. She pauses and purses her lips and waits until he swallows.

"Can I ask you a question?"

He nods and takes a sip of coffee. "Sure. Go ahead."

"Were you happy this happened to me?" She drags her fork across her plate to push her salad together into a pile. It rasps against the porcelain and sends goosebumps down her arms, and she watches the runoff vinaigrette swirl with the red tomato sauce.

"What?" He sounds genuinely befuddled.

"When you heard I lost my memories… were you glad?"

"Of course not. " A too-long pause. He pops another bite of fish into his mouth and chews, rubs his jaw with the palm of his hand, sighs through his nose. Swallows. "What makes you say that?"

"I heard some things. About you." She slices another corner of her lasagna with the side of her fork. "Specifically, that you wanted to make me forget."

He lifts another bite of fish to his mouth and chews slowly. Too slowly, like his too-long pauses, as if he's made of tin and his joints are rusting up. As if his muscles are tense and his breathing is steady and he's trying too hard to pretend he's oblivious. (As if he's angry and scared, and a man backed against a wall can be a dangerous thing.)

"Who told you that?" he asks.

"Emma." And Rum. (But it's not a lie. Emma did tell her.)

He doesn't answer.

"Father, what did you do?"

He takes another bite of his lunch.

"Please," she says, and maybe she would grab his hand if he wasn't grasping the fork like a weapon, or drumming his fingers against the table. "Just tell me the truth."

"I thought it would be the best for you," he says.

"So you kidnapped me?"

"I was only trying to help." (She knew it was true, but it's so hard to hear.)

"Why didn't you tell me before? You didn't have to hide it."

"Because I knew you'd react like this."

"Like what?" She stares at him.

"Like… this. Angry." He purses his lips and glances down to his place. "Hurt."

"How do you want me to react?" She drops her fork on her plate and folds her hands on her lap, scrunching skirt and napkin together between clenched fists. She lowers her voice and raises her eyes. "You kidnapped me."

His gaze snaps up to meet hers. "I did it for your own good. I've done everything for you."

"No." She shakes her head, and her hands are up again, in front of her, between the two of them and holding him back. "You've done everything for _you_. Love isn't kidnapping. Love isn't controlling my life." (Love isn't holding _Belle_ over her head like a cage, like a future and a past and the only part of her that matters.) She sighs, and before she can think of implications or feelings or the lasagna growing cold on the plate, she pulls the napkin off her lap and slaps it down on the table.

"What are you doing?" her father asks.

"I have to go," she says.

"You haven't eaten."

"I'm meeting Rum for dinner. I can wait until then." She fumbles in her purse for her wallet.

"Rum?" he asks. (It sounds sour and bitter when he says it, with the after-burn of the drink itself and none of the sweetness.)

"Mister Gold," she says.

He's mad. She can tell. His face turns red (and her face is red too), and she thinks the fork in his fist might snap in half.

"You can't love him," he says.

"I never said I did. I just met him. I hardly know anything about him." She lays two bills on the table and tucks them under the corner of her plate. There's enough there to cover the food, plus a tip, and the lasagna isn't eaten but Granny will understand. (In fact, Granny watches from the counter with crossed arms and a stern look, and Jane has no doubt that she's on her side.)

"Then why—"

"Because I know he loves me." (And that's more than she can confidently say about Moe.) "He's a part of my life now. And until you can accept that, I don't want to see you."

She fastens her purse and slings the strap over her arm, gathering up her book and the bouquet of daisies.

Until he can forgive Rum, she doesn't know if she can forgive him.

"But…" he says, staring at her, reaching out (and he tries to put his hand on her arm but she pulls away), "I thought this was our chance for a new start."

She stands. "Goodbye, father."

"Don't leave," he says.

It's not a request. (It's a command, frantic and shoved in her face like a porcelain cup, and she ignores it.)

"Belle—"

She pushes open the door, and the breeze lashes her skirt against her legs and drowns out his pleas for her to stay. (Erases commands and disappointments, and it's so much easier to distance herself when the wind scours the regret from his voice.)

"Belle—sweetheart!"

She's not Belle. (And he doesn't care.)

She closes the door behind her.

A new start is a new start (and makes it so much easier to walk out on the man who calls himself her father than she ever would have expected).

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry for the wait! Long story short, I missed my exams, had to reschedule, AND got a sinus infection all in the span of about a week and a half. Not conducive to writing. BUT, we should be back to our regularly scheduled broadcast after this, so I hope you enjoy! Thanks so much for all the amazing feedback, and as soon as I get caught up on some chapters for the next few weeks, I plan on replying to said amazing feedback. You guys are the best. Thanks so much.

A MAJOR thanks to AK for rescuing me and editing this at ridiculous hours at night while I was sleeping so I could post it today, and to Chippedcupofchai for looking it over a few days ago when I was floundering in despair and AK was sleeping. xD I LOVE YOU BOTH.


	12. Chapter 12

She's nervous.

She shouldn't be, (it's not like she's trying to climb a mountain or slay a beast—she's just eating dinner with Rum), but her stomach twists and her hands shake and her teeth chatter against her glass every time she tries to take a sip, and she's so jittery she thinks she might drop her food all down the front of her dress.

She's nervous because this is not like other dinners. Not like chicken parmesan at Granny's or crab legs at the little seafood restaurant by the docks. Not like hamburgers and Cobb salad and casual pancakes just before Ruby switches the diner over to lunch menus at eleven. Not even like ice cream or the picnic by the beach. (This time he's cooked pork chops with mandarin oranges and garlic mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley, and it tastes like heaven when she can actually get it to her mouth.)

This time it feels like a date.

The other outings have been dates (technically), she knows. But this feels like a flowers and candlelight, wine and soft music, chocolate mousse for dessert and kissing afterwards kind of date. (This time it feels like it matters.)

She's confused (because there's nobody around to regulate her feelings—and some days she doesn't even feel qualified to dress herself, let alone sort through matted options that lay before her like a tangle of yarn). She doesn't know if she wants to be on a date with him. She doesn't know if she wants to sit here (in the place that used to be Belle's) and force smiles across the table. She doesn't know if she's a smitten kind of nervous or a too-deep-too-fast kind of nervous and she needs to get out.

(She doesn't know if she wants him to kiss her, but she doesn't know that she _doesn't_ want him to, either.)

He notices.

He stops eating. Lays his fork and knife down on the side of his plate and takes a sip of water. His expression looks like he walked face first into a tangle of brambles, but he keeps his voice calm (and she appreciates the effort). "Is something wrong?"

She purses her lips and shakes her head. Shrugs. "I don't know."

"Is there… anything I can do?"

She wipes her mouth with the napkin from her lap, and her lipstick leaves a smear of red against the navy cloth. "I don't know," she says honestly.

He was smiling when they started dinner, but he isn't smiling now. Now his eyes plead with her; now he's terrified she'll walk out and leave him sitting at the table, (like she's left her father, like she's left him so many times before). Now he looks nervous and that only makes things worse.

"I think… maybe I just need some air?"

She wants to comfort him like he's comforted her, and maybe it's not a lie. Maybe she really does need some air, and the breeze and the sky and the low-hanging sun will stop her head from spinning and stop her heart from trying to pound out of her chest. Maybe it will vanquish the walls and the doors, and she can surround herself with flowers (instead of the trappings of his power), and the sky (instead of the house where Belle used to live, in a place filled with her memories).

He smiles an exact smile, a careful smile, and pulls his cloth napkin off his lap. He folds it twice and lays it neatly beside his plate before standing. "How about we take a stroll in the garden?"

The air feels lighter, already less stale (even though he hasn't opened the door yet) and she smiles. "Okay," she says.

He fetches his cane from where it hangs on the edge of the kitchen counter, and she thinks he might be relieved, just like her. (He hasn't mentioned Belle, but Jane can _tell_, she can see the loss in his eyes just the same as she can see the photograph of them together above the mantelpiece, or the way one bedroom door was kept locked when he gave her the tour of the house.)

She folds her napkin (into a triangle, with a tiny smile on her lips) and tucks it under her plate. She stands, and runs her hand down the front of her sleek black dress to smooth out the wrinkles.

He holds the door for her, hand gesturing to the outside.

She wanted out, (but not away), so she lets him walk her along the little garden path that wraps around the house. Side-by-side (too close together or too far apart and she can't quite tell the difference any more), they pass ferns and a lattice of creeping vines, following the brick laid path onto his back patio.

The patio opens onto a manicured lawn, landscaped and cultivated and surrounded by a tall wood fence the colour of honey. Several trees, a little bench tucked under a tall black maple, flowers and bushes and an herb garden, and a small shed tucked neatly in the far corner. It smells of wet grass and peat moss and just-blooming flowers.

She stops at the edge of the bricks.

He stops too. Only his cane crosses the border, plants itself firmly onto the soft ground grass.

"You don't want to keep going?"

She does. But she's in heels and he has a cane and it hardly seems wise. (And that the edge of the patio seems like some sort of barrier, like moving from brick to grass is one step too far.) "I don't want to aggravate your leg," she says. "It seems like it's bothering you tonight."

"It is." His eyes flick up towards hers, and his mouth twists up. "But no more than usual."

She stares out at the yard and spots a line of pockmarks across the immaculate grass—little indents she follows with her eyes, around the trees and bushes, through the garden, to a rake leaning against the fence and a green apron hanging folded over the back of a patio chair.

"Did you do all this yourself?" she asks.

"Yes."

"By hand?"

"You sound shocked."

"I didn't know you were such a gardener," she says.

"Well," he gives a little shrug and shifts his weight, adjusting the angle of his knee and digging his cane a little deeper into the grass, "It seems I'm just full of surprises."

"I've noticed."

"Have you?"

She smiles. "I'm very observant."

"Indeed you are."

And he is surprising.

Surprising like the way he stands with his free arm hanging loose, (like her hand belongs in his, pressed against his palm, and he's unbalanced without it). Surprising like the way he stares out into the garden and smiles at her without really looking at her, (as if he knows that she feels unbalanced too, as if he can feel the magnets between them, as if he always planned for her to stand a single step closer).

The sun is setting (and the warmth is leaving), but that's not the only reason she moves towards him. Not the only reason she rubs her fingers together, to work up the nerve. She moves towards him and works up the nerve because she doesn't know what she wants (but she knows he needs touch as much as she needs touch, and she knows she's wanted to touch him since the day they he showed up in her library with a picnic basket).

And so she slides her hands into his. His palm is warm (and her skin crawls). But it's a good kind of crawl, (perhaps a smitten kind of crawl), and she doesn't entirely hate it because she knows he'll let her go if she asks him to.

For a moment he doesn't move. He stands stock still, as if shot, as if a bullet blasted straight through his shoulder and he's in shock and he doesn't remember who he is and the world is in chaos—and then his fingers close on hers. Gently. Feather-light. (As afraid and tentative as she feels, with something happy and heartbreaking all at once wavering in the back of his gaze.)

"Thank you," he says, after a long moment (in which he barely seems to breathe).

"For what?"

"For everything," he says, and he smiles.

She bites her lip and tries to ignore the rising heat in her face. Thankfully the sun is setting fast, and everything in sight glows as pink as her cheeks.

"We, uh…" She clears her throat and coughs into her free hand and tries to sound nonchalant. "We can go back, if you want?"

"We don't have to," he says. "If you're still hungry, I could bring our plates out here."

"It's okay," she says. "I think I'm ready."

He nods once and turns, and she slides her hand into the crook of his arm.

They're not quite in sync—his gait is a little awkward, and the rhythm of his cane feels out of step with their feet—but it feels good. It feels good, and he feels safe (and his navy dress shirt is softer than she expected, and his arm is warmer, and his muscles firmer). And she thinks she likes it.

"I'm sorry I ruined dinner," she says.

"You haven't ruined anything."

"It's probably cold by now."

"A problem easily mended, my dear."

She watches his face (because he watches where they're going so she doesn't have to), and tries to read his expression. "Magic?" she asks.

His lips twist up and he shrugs, and the extra bump in their already awkward gait causes her to stumble slightly. He steadies her and smiles. "I suppose we could do that," he says. "But I was referring to the microwave."

He pulls the door open and she laughs (and she's still unsteady, still wobbly on her feet because she's in heels and the bricks are uneven and he makes it extraordinarily hard to concentrate) and squeezes his arm a little tighter.

They finish dinner (thanks to a functional microwave), and eat a lovely dessert of chocolate mousse. They do dishes, and listen to the radio, and laugh at things that aren't particularly funny, and then he drives her back to the hospital. They sit in the parking lot, in the red leather interior of a black Cadillac, and talk until her throat grows sore. He walks her to the front door and bids her goodnight.

He doesn't kiss her, (but she's most definitely a smitten kind of nervous… and she doesn't think she'd mind).

xxxx

She doesn't remember high school, and her father isn't here, but Jane feels like a skulking teenager as she slips across the lobby and down the hallway to the wards. Except for an awkward and apologetic wave to a nurse by the coffee machine, she manages to avoid mostly everyone else. By the time she's halfway to her room, she carries her heels in one hand and her blue peacoat in her other—and she's glad she didn't ask the coffee machine nurse to help her with the zipper at the back of her dress, because when she turns the corner, she sees Doctor Whale sitting in a plastic chair just outside her door.

"Jane, hey." He stands. "I was hoping I'd catch you."

"Is—is something wrong?" she asks. (He's a doctor and it's long past midnight, and from everything she's read that's never a good combination.)

"No, not at all," he says. He smiles at her, (and if something was wrong he wouldn't be smiling). "I was just hoping to talk."

"Now?"

He spreads his hands (one holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee and the other with a flip-notebook) and shrugs. "No time like the present." He looks over her coat and shoes and dress, and then checks his wristwatch with a frown that crinkles his forehead and dampens his smile. "Unless you had other plans, of course."

She shrugs and sets her shoes and jacket on the floor, tucked in beside the wall. "Nothing that can't wait. Just sleep."

"Completely overrated," he says, and drains the rest of his coffee as if to prove his point.

"So… what did you want to talk about? At one in the morning. In the hallway."

"Well, you're moving tomorrow," he says. "And I don't work on Thursdays—not including emergency surgeries or women too pregnant to wait until Friday. So," he shrugs his hands into his pockets, notebook and coffee cup both disappearing into the white labcoat, "I just wanted to say goodbye while I still had the chance."

She smiles because he looks so sheepish, (and because it's the only way she can keep her eyes from watering). "I'm not going anywhere," she says with a laugh. "Just down the street."

"I know," he says.

"And the library _is_ public—or, will be. You can come visit any time."

"I know," he says. He pulls his hands out of his pockets (but leaves the notebook and the cup in his lab coat) and folds his arms. "But to be perfectly honest, I'll be bored without you. After all, I don't get a new amnesia patient every day."

"Well, thank goodness for that."

"Although we do get considerably more than average. But, out all the amnesia patients I've personally treated…" he pauses, and smiles with teeth flashing and eyebrow cocked (and blue eyes soft, looking at her like a person and not like a patient and not like a ghost), "…you're my favourite."

"And you're going to make my cry." She bites her lip and stares at the floor so she doesn't have to meet his eyes.

"Hey, no, don't do that." He smiles, and she manages to smile back, and he hands her a plastic wrapped package of tissues from yet another pocket. "You should be celebrating. This is what you've been waiting for."

"I know," she says, and she's amazed at how fast their roles have changed (and maybe they support each other, and maybe they're less doctor and patient and more… friends).

"I'm very happy for you, Jane."

"Thanks, Doctor Whale."

"Viktor," he says. He tucks the tissues away (and she notices he keeps a spare one clutched in his own hand, and swabs at his eyes when he thinks she's not looking). "I have to get back to work," he says. "But I'll see you at the opening next Saturday."

"You don't have to work?"

"I wouldn't miss it," he says. "Of course, excepting emergency surgeries or pregnant women."

"I'll miss you."

He coughs (into the tissue, and he clutches it tight in his fist), and gives a shrug like it doesn't matter. "Let me know if you ever need anything, ever, and I'll be happy to help."

"I will."

"Goodnight." He picks up his plastic chair and begins walking down the hall. She collects her shoes and jacket from their place on the floor, and his footsteps stop. "Jane?" he asks.

"Yes?"

"Have a good life out there," he says. (The confidence in his tone makes her think that maybe she _can_.)

"Thanks, Viktor."

"No need to thank me," he says, and starts back down the hall with the chair tucked under his arm. "You deserve it."

And maybe confidence is catching, (because he says she deserves a good life, and for the very first time she feels like she _does_.)


	13. Chapter 13

It's not the first time she's seen the apartment.

It's not the first time she's slid the key (the new key, the new doorknob, because the old key is still lost along with her old life) into the doorknob and stepped inside.

It's not the first time she's walked into welcoming open space, or heard her heels click on the floor, or pulled open all the curtains until the sun glowed off honey-coloured wood and blue-grey walls. (Not even the tenth time—she passed double digits last week, when she came in to test the plumbing and wash her first load of laundry in her own apartment.)

What this _is_, however, is the first time she plans to stay. The first time it truly belongs to her. (The first time it feels like home.)

She doesn't have many things to move. Most of the dishes and books and paintings on the walls are Belle's, and most of the furniture has apparently been here since time immemorial (heavy and antique and set to last another eternity as long as she treats it with respect)—but she _has_ collected a few boxes of books and clothes, and a pleasant assortment of personal items over the past few months. A lamp Granny gave her, a stack of DVDs from Ruby (and a few sleek dresses she keeps tucked at the bottom of her suitcase), books from Doctor Whale and a charm bracelet from Henry (who got it from Emma, who got it from Mary Margaret, who got it from Gold's antique shop). Her copy of Jane Eyre and a bottle of white wine from Leroy and the pages from National Geographic. (A little bit of portable comfort, familiarity, and hope.)

She doesn't have many things to move, but she has _important_ things to move—tangible things and meaningful things and things that belong to her.

But it's still a big step. And it's still a little frightening (even though she's been here before), and so she's glad that Rum and Emma offered to come along. Facing the empty spaces, the apartment alone, seems too exhausting a task. (They could each carry a single pencil, and they'd be a greater help than they could ever know.) They bicker and they scoff and they glare at one another, but they break the silence and make the newness seem a little more bearable.

By ten o'clock, Emma follows her up the stairs with the final load of boxes, while Rum organizes the kitchen (both because she trusts him implicitly with breakables, and to save his leg on the stairs).

Emma's box is marked '7/7', and she trudges across the floor to the back of the room, where the shelves are already filled nearly floor-to-ceiling (with Belle's books), and the other six boxes sit stacked at the base. Emma drops the box atop another two, creating one stack of three and one of four, and then brushes her hands against her jeans.

"Well, that's the last of them." She sticks her hands in her back pocket, and turns to Jane. "Unless you want us to start moving the rest of the library up here."

Jane laughs. It does seem like Belle had hoarded a significant portion of the library, but she's combed through every book just to make sure, and they're all scrawled with 'Belle' on the inside of the covers. (She's inherited a sizable collection—and she's not complaining.)

"Do you want me to start unpacking or something?"

"No—thank you," Jane says, perhaps a little too quickly. She smiles and tries to look appreciative (rather than terrified at the thought of Emma shelving books on an otherwise meticulously organized shelf). "I can do it later."

Emma shrugs. "Anything else you want me to do?"

She only has books and clothes to unpack, and she's cleaned and dusted everything several times over, and so she shrugs in return. "You could, uh, make some tea? I don't know about you, but I could use a cup." And Jane has no idea if Emma actually knows how to make tea, (because she's only ever seen the sheriff with hot chocolate or coffee or occasionally alcohol in hand)—but Mister Gold is nearby for damage control.

And so Emma leaves. Jane can hear the clink of dishes and the sliding of drawers, (and the bickering begins almost instantly).

Gold's voice is quiet, but the edge of irritation carries into the living room without trouble. "You do realize I'm supposed to be putting things _inside_ the cupboards, don't you?"

"They're going to be taken out eventually." More sliding, opening, clinking. "Where's the kettle?"

"Not out of the box yet."

"Jane asked me to make tea. It's a bit hard to do without boiling water."

"Oh no," and sarcasm _drips_ from his voice like honey, so thick that Jane has to hide her smile behind her hand to keep from laughing out loud, "if only there were another way to heat water. Something… metal, perhaps. Vaguely bowl shaped." The clang of a pot on the counter. Emma's sigh of exasperation.

At great risk to the safety of her kitchen, Jane ignores them thoroughly and carries her box – open because she couldn't be bothered to tape it shut—and goes into her bedroom.

Her room is furniture and bare walls, and only the beginnings of a character peeking through. A day bed near the window, a dresser and a bookcase given equal prominence along the wall, a little writing desk and a wooden chair near the door. Little glimpses of habitation in the choice of fountain pens instead of ballpoints, the full-length mirror with a to-do list in flowery handwriting written on a bright yellow sticky note, the fleur-de-lix pattern on the blue and white duvet, and the single framed photograph of a German castle above the bookcase. Heavy curtains with rope ties she never wants to close, and a view of the town (and a view of the sky).

Maybe it's not a mansion—but it's comfortable, and it's bright, and it's charming (and it's hers).

She opens the window and empties the box onto the bed, sitting on the corner of the mattress and spreading her belongings out across the covers. Her favourite sweater and her cell phone, some cards from the nurses and one from Doctor Whale, her copy of _Jane Eyre_. She'll put them away before she sleeps, find little spots to tuck everything away, but for now she needs to see them. (Because sometimes she still has trouble believing that she sits in _her _room, in _her_ life, that this is independence and freedom and everything she's wanted).

She sits in the sunlight and the stillness, until she hears the clang of the teapot against the counter and remembers that _her_ kitchen is occupied and in very real danger (and her independence and freedom means that she is free to independently pay for any damages Rum and Emma might cause to _her_ crockery).

Somehow, in the time it takes her to move out of the bedroom and into the living room, just outside the doorway of the small kitchen, the more-or-less civil banter has degenerated into total war. Rum and Emma have drawn up battle lines on either side of the teapot (which steams away, white and currently lidless, on the counter between them). Emma brandishes a teaspoon at Rum, who holds out a finger that looks equally as deadly.

"You can't just… magic spell… other people's houses," Emma says.

"And why not?"

"Because it's none of your business? That's kind of the definition of _other_ people's houses."

"Technically—" He turns his accusing, threatening finger in on himself, and taps his chest with his fingertips like he's playing a piano on his breastbone. "—I still own the deed. So I'm making it my business."

"Technically," Emma says, and stirs the tea with her spoon before pointing it at him again, dripping tea onto the tiled floor, "you gave it to her. And she lives here. So it's not your call."

"Cora's still out there."

"We haven't heard from her in weeks."

"All the more reason to be prepared." He pulls three mugs from the cupboard (where a line of mugs are already lined up like tiny soldiers, perfectly spaced, handles facing out) and sets them down on the counter. "Don't let her fool you, Miss Swan. She's silent because she's plotting something—and there's nothing more dangerous in this world than a scheming Cora. Except for me."

(They're grandstanding now, Jane thinks. Puffed out chests and accusatory stares, smirks and a heavy roll of Emma's eyes. But they're also nervous. On edge. Tense because maybe a silent Cora is a deadly Cora, and maybe she really is waiting for the perfect place to strike.)

Emma folds her arms. "If you're so dangerous, why don't you just get rid of her right now?"

"I'm not omniscient. Do your _job_, Sheriff, and find her, and then we'll talk. Meanwhile, I'm going to do something useful and protect this library."

"Belle wouldn't like it."

Something in Rum's face slips. Like a curtain yanked from the window, his antagonism plummets away. For a moment he just stares at Emma, one hand on his cane and the other resting quietly on the countertop. He breathes. His brows crease almost imperceptibly. And then his eyes harden. "Belle's not here," he says.

No she's not. (But Jane is.)

And it's _her _house now, and _her _responsibility, and so she steps forward into the kitchen and smiles at them both. (Not in a mean way, not particularly, but in a way that establishes her presense effectively.) "You could always ask me instead," she says, and she enjoys the expression of guilt frozen on Gold and Emma's faces.

Gold recovers the quickest. He smiles back, smooth and unperturbed (a used car salesman kind of smile). He leans against the counter (his cane hangs from the back of the kitchen chair) and polishes the interior of the tea mugs with a tea towel he snatches from the drawer beside him. "Of course," he says. "Of course, we will."

"So," she asks, and moves to the fridge to pull out a carton of milk, "what do you want to do to my house?"

"Magic," Emma says, and Rum shoots her a look that silences her (and earns a glare in return).

He throws the towel over his shoulder. "It's just a few spells, for protection. Nothing to worry about."

"What kind of spells?" Jane asks. She hands him the milk.

"A barrier of sorts." He pours a dribble of milk into each of the mugs. "People you don't want in…" and he gives a little shrug, "…can't come in."

"Will it hurt them?"

He shoots another quick glance at Emma (another challenging, disapproving stare, as if daring her to confront him), and then says, "Yes. But only if they try and force their way inside." He trades the carton for the pot of tea and fills the mugs. "And it won't kill them."

"My friends?" Jane asks.

"Will be unharmed," he says.

"Visitors?"

"Fine," he says.

"And nobody will die."

"No." He adds a half-teaspoon of sugar to her tea (because he's paid attention to her order at Granny's) and hands her the mug.

She accepts it, curls her hands around it and tilts her face to catch the steam curling up from the lip of the cup. "Okay," she says, without looking up. "Do it."

"What?" Emma says.

Jane looks up.

Rum smirks, and picks up his own mug, leaving the sugar and the third mug on the counter.

Emma snatches the remaining cup of tea (without adding sugar, even though Jane knows she has a sweet tooth) before crossing her arms and leaning back against the counter. She looks a little defensive, like she's curling into an armoured shell, like she's uncomfortable and on edge and expecting danger. "You're sure about this?"

Jane looks at Rum, who drinks his tea one-handed (with his other hand braced against the counter for support) and pretends not to take interest in their conversation. She purses her lips and smiles and makes a decision. "I'm sure," she says. "I trust him."

Emma doesn't. But she doesn't say anything. Instead, she makes a face when she sips her scalding tea, and acts as though she doesn't care. "Your call."

Still not sure what she thinks of magic (all she remembers is fireballs and healing and terror, and he still hasn't shown her magic like he promised), but if it will keep her safe, she's willing to risk it. If Rum thinks it's a good idea—if he's willing to do it for her (and maybe for _Belle_, but Jane doesn't want to think about her right now)—then she'll let him do what he needs to do.

"Go ahead," she says. "Please."

The corner of Rum's mouth curls up when Jane tries to meet his gaze, but he tries to hide it beneath a sip of tea that looks almost too-casual. "I will gather the necessary supplies, and then Miss Swan and I will come back on Saturday," he says.

"Wait a second," Emma says. "I didn't volunteer for this."

"Consider it a learning opportunity."

"What if I don't want to learn?" Emma's crossed arms and the scowl on her face (scalding tea and irritation mixed) make her look rather intimidating.

Rum, however, smiles at her like she's nothing more than an obstinate child. "I can pick you up around eight, if you need a ride."

Emma looks like she might throw her tea at Rum's head, but then she sighs heavily through her nose and glares at him from under lowered eyebrows. "I can drive myself."

xxxx

She meets Rum at his pink house for dinner (after her books are unpacked and the teapot is washed and put away), and this time they _do_ eat outside. Tucked together on the bench under the maple, they eat stew and crusty bread, drink ice water and chilled white wine, and go for a walk when her bowl is empty and the just-setting sun makes her drowsy. He shows off his herb garden and the vast uncharted depths of his tool shed. He stands next to her as they talk, and she entwines her fingers with his.

And it feels wonderful.

It feels good to walk with him like this, feels good to touch him (because he needs it as much as her) and good to be touched. The pace of their steps more in sync, more at ease, and his hand so gentle around hers that she could almost forget he was there—except that her skin prickles in an entirely unexpected way (fizzing and happy, like bubbles in a soda), and he's so very unforgettable.

"I have something I want to show you," Rum says as they start down the brick path and back to the house (when the mosquitos start whining in their ears).

"I hope it's dessert," she says. She loops his arm through his elbow, and he stares at her like she's a hallucination instead of a person (like he's terrified to hold her close because she might slip away), and so she tightens her grip and smiles, just to watch his eyes grow wider. "You did promise me a chocolate cake, you know."

"I did, indeed," he says. "But I promised you something else, first."

Magic.

She knows it as soon as he says it. She can see it in his eyes, a swirling contradiction. Excitement and hope, and resignation and anticipation, and caution and _fear, _all snarled together. And she wonders if she should be nervous too (or if he's still bleeding from the words she said at the beginning of time, the 'what are you' aimed at a man who healed bullet holes with his hands and lit the sky on fire).

She rubs her thumb across the material of his suit jacket, (because he needs the touch to assure him that she won't leave again, even if he has magic, and she can see the corners of his mouth twitch when he pretends not to notice). He tightens his elbow and pulls her just a little closer to his side.

He leads her past the kitchen, to the end of the path near the end of the fence, and stops in front of a pair of cellar doors.

The wind (until now, a summer breeze) grows suddenly cold.

He pulls away from her to open the doors, and Jane swallows. She glances at the first two stairs, illuminated by watery garden sunlight, and bites her lip.

"Down there?" she asks.

He turns to look at her (and she can hear the concern in his voice, even though she stares at the ground and not at the basement and not at his eyes). "Is that a problem?" he asks quietly.

"Maybe," she says, and it's the truth. Maybe she'll be fine, but maybe she'll panic, because she hasn't been in a basement since _then_ and she hadn't planned to go in a basement again for a long time.

"Do you want to try?" he asks.

She trusts him. But it's one thing to trust him in the garden and the diner, and another thing entirely to trust him down there (in the dark), hedged in by worn and wooden doors, hinged in with wrought iron handles and wrought iron locks. By concrete steps and dirt (and, truthfully, she doesn't know what his basement looks like, but she doesn't like basements).

She stares down into the darkness because it seems to writhe before her eyes, screaming and clawing away from the sudden light. She stares down into the darkness like the darkness might bite her.

He takes two steps down and flicks a light switch on the wall. "We won't be long, I promise." He holds out his hand.

The weight of indecision seems to crush her, Encyclopedia Britannica resting directly on her chest, making it hard to breathe. And he waits so patiently, and she can see the flicker of hope in his sad brown eyes, and she knows she's not Belle (because Belle would have gone down with him right away) and it hurts as acutely as a coffee table to the shin.

But she also sees that there's a window, and it's dry down there (no water and no floods and no storms). And the basement smells of wood shavings and straw, and a faint smell like cinnamon, or like bitter coffee or baking bread or something she can't quite name but _almost _remembers. So unlike the hospital, (and his eyes are unlike the hospital because his eyes are soft) and if she doesn't want to go down the stairs he won't make her.

And she knows she's not Belle, but maybe in this moment he just wants Jane.

She takes his hand.

He helps her down the stairs, and they conquer each step one at a time (because he has a cane and she can't stop shivering), and he leads her to a room defined by rough unfinished wood, a spinning wheel and a pile of straw in the corner beneath the window, and a shelf of brightly glowing bottles. (A lonely, quiet, place, tinged with the same shade of grief as his eyes— and she thinks she'll recognize the echo of wood beams and spinning wheels and straw in his smile ever after.)

It's brightly lit, and visible from the garden through the little window above ground-level, (and not frightening in the least).

"You alright?" he asks.

She realizes she's still hanging onto his arm, and she relinquishes her grip. She lets her hands fall to her sides, and she runs her palms over her skirt to combat imaginary wrinkles. "Fine," she says. (And she's surprised to find it true. Maybe she was right to do the brave thing, because maybe bravery _did_ follow.)

"Good," he says. He unbuttons his jacket and hangs it on the back of the chair that sits beside the spinning wheel. "Because I promised to show you magic." He sits down and lays his cane on the clear floor to his left. From the pile on the right side of the chair, he picks up a handful of straw.

She narrows her eyes. "Really?"

He raises his eyebrows and looks entirely too innocent as he begins to thread straw into the wheel.

"You're really going to spin it?"

He nods. (As if it's the most natural thing in the world. As if to say 'whatever do you mean?' and pretend it holds absolutely no connection to the fact his name is _Rumplestiltskin_.)

"Into gold?" She can hear her own disbelief, and she's (almost) joking… but he smirks, and he does something with his hands that makes the wheel turn and the straw glint. "I can't believe it. You actually _are_."

She shakes her head and takes a step closer, skirting around the pile of straw, leaning close—and the wheel turns faster, and he adds more straw, (and maybe he is really Rumplestiltskin, because you can't make thread from straw and you can't make gold from thread, but there it is, pooled onto the floor).

He places one hand on the wheel to halt its movement, and then pulls a pair of scissors out of thin air (in a very literal, non-metaphorical sense, in which one moment he holds no scissors and the next he does). He snips a length from the thread and says, "Here."

She holds out her palm. Slowly, he pools it in her hand. It clinks, and it's heavy, and it's cool metal against warm skin, and it's definitely gold.

"Well?" he asks.

"Well… it's gold," she says.

"Indeed it is."

"It's… magic," she says.

"Yes."

"It's… not what I expected."

He blinks. He tilts his head, and looks up (and it feels so strange to stare down at him, to see the top of his head instead of the bottom of his chin, to see the light in his eyes instead of the shadows, to see the glint of teeth when he smiles). "What were you expecting?"

"More?"

A flash of gold amidst a flash of teeth. "Are you looking for a raise already?"

"No—I just meant—" She sighs, and closes her hand over the thread. "I suppose I just expected it to be flashier? You know, more… magical looking?"

"If you were expecting blood sacrifice," he says, and snips another length of gold thread from the long strand pooled at his feet, "I gave that up time ago."

She gives him a small smile. "Before or after you stopped stealing babies?"

"Before," he says. He snips another length and lays the two strands across his knee. "It's been a slow but steady reform."

She nods slowly, affecting mock sincerity for what (she assumes) is a mock confession. (Although now, after _Rumplestiltskin_ and straw into gold, she's not entirely certain of the difference between the truth and a quip.)

"By the way," he says," I'll be needing that back."

Before she can formulate a response, she feels a tugging at her palm, and the thread of gold snakes through her fingers and into Rum's open palm. (And she can't claim it doesn't startle her, but it doesn't send her into hysterics and it won't haunt her nightmares, so she just smiles and tucks her hand under her arm.)

He begins braiding the strands together, long fingers twining the gold into an intricate weave. "You know," he says, voice low and eyes intent on his work, "I've always been fascinated by braiding."

"Have you?" (She can't say the same, until now. She can't take her eyes off him.)

"It's quite a marvellous invention, really. It takes separate things, and binds them together. It makes weak things strong. It takes lowly things and turns them into something beautiful."

"Is that an analogy for something?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "Merely an observation." He ties off the braid and waves his hand, adding clasps to the end of the gold braid (with a tiny puff of blue smoke that smells like citrus and the earth after a storm). "And a necklace." He stands, and holds it out with both hands. "May I?"

Her neck itches at the thought (and her cheeks flush), but she turns her back to him and she tries not to squirm when he pulls her hair over her shoulder with gentle hands. And metal settles against her collarbones (like a shackle but not like a shackle, because shackles are always cold and this is as warm as his hands), and he fastens the clip. They stand there for a long moment, his hand on her shoulders, and her back at his chest, and then he slides her hair back into place almost reverently and spins her around.

She brushes her fingers across the chain and smiles up at him. "How does it look?"

"Beautiful," he says. "Always."

"Thank you," she says.

"It was my absolute pleasure." He stares at her for a long while, and then the corner of his mouth twists up. "Besides, I was under contract."

"You still are," she says. She slips around behind him and moves to the spinning wheel, gathering his jacket from the chair and his cane from the floor.

He turns to follow her movement, an awkward hop-shuffle-spin on his bad leg. "Am I, now?"

"Of course." She hands him his cane. She folds his jacket over her arm, and smiles, and takes his hand and pulls him towards the stairs. "Don't think I've forgotten about the cake. Contrary to popular belief, I have a very good memory."

* * *

**A/N: **HI PEEPS. Thanks for sticking with me, and sorry for the delay in posting. I fell behind and I've been scrambling to catch up ever since. I'm also rubbish at trying to write when my schedule is in flux, but my work schedule should be pretty consistent now, and I'll do my best to get back on track.

Just so everyone has a heads up, I'm dividing the story into three parts. Part one is nearly finished- it'll probably be done after two more chapters. So, after fifteen (or sixteen, if it runs long for some reason), I'm going to take a bit of a hiatus. I'll try not to make it too long, but I need to basically write a TON of chaps for the next part so I can get back to my weekly posting schedule. I hate having to write and post without any buffer, because it makes me panic and then I take even longer to get things done. So it'll be for the best! I'm sorry if it bums anyone out, but if it helps, I'll be writing prompts and stuff in the interim, so I won't leave you totally in the lurch. Anyway, thanks for following and reading, you're all fantabulous. I also WILL reply to stuff. It's just... I'm bad at it. I really am. So it might take me a while, but I will reply. I will I will I will.

Thank you so much for everything. I appreciate it more than I can express in a timely and coherent fashion. urawk.


	14. Chapter 14

Unlike Mister Gold, Jane does not have magic or experience to guide her through her dinner preparations. What she does have, however, is unlimited access to the library, grit determination, and insomnia. By two AM, she's experimented with five variations of chicken pot pie. (Three were tolerable but uninspiring, one imploded, and the other burned into a blackened husk.) By four AM, she's leafed through eight more cookbooks, and by five, she discovers the perfect recipe. She assembles the pie with intense concentration, cooks it half way, and tucks it into the fridge beside the spinach salad.

By eight, fuelled by five cups of tea and a full box of animal crackers, she finishes tidying the kitchen. She wanders into the living room with her sleeves rolled up and her elbows speckled with flour, and she opens all the curtains (because she's glad the night is over, because the nights are too long and too quiet and too lonely). She settles onto the sofa with _Anne of Green Gables_, bathed in sunlight and the sounds of life drifting in on the late-spring air.

And then she waits.

xxxx

She awakens to the sound of the doorbell. (Her heart beats a frantic military tattoo in her temples, commanding her limbs to a double-time scramble towards the door before she's even fully conscious.) He's here and she's fallen asleep (again), and nothing is ready (but at least she had the good sense to get changed before drifting off this time). She was apparently sleeping with her mouth open, and, after her third accidental nap, her throat is dry and she can hardly keep her eyes open. She feels like she's been gargling sand.

This whole insomnia routine is going to take some getting used to.

She stifles a yawn and pulls open the door.

Rum stands on the landing at the top of the stairs, looking rather dashing in a suit with a turquoise shirt, black tie, and a silver pocket square. He holds his cane halfway up the shaft (he apparently used the handle to push the doorbell and was preparing to do so again) and carries a long, thin box tucked under his arm.

"Hey," she says quietly, giving him a bleary smile.

"Hey," he says. He resettles his cane and leans on it. His eyes flick over her dishevelled appearance. "Am I early?"

She shakes her head. "I'm just running a bit late. Sorry. Come on in."

If he notices the state of her living room (couch cushions skewed, _Anne of Green Gables_ lying on the floor where it had slid from her grip, glass of water still sitting on the glass coffee table), he doesn't say anything. He just follows her in silence, a few steps behind (and if he notices her occasional off-balance stumble-steps, he doesn't say anything about them either). She feels the need to explain, regardless.

"I fell asleep," she says, by way of apology. (Not drunk, she wants to assure him. Not insane. Not fraying at the edges or in need of desperate help. Just tired.)

He only says, "Oh?"

She's had a busy week. She's moved and cleaned and worked, and she has every right to be tired. It's true. But she can't hide the way her teeth pluck at her bottom lip, or the way she fists her hands around the bottom of her light blue cardigan, and so she doesn't try. She just smiles and gives a little shrug and says, "It's a new place. And I, uh, I haven't had many new places. It'll just take me a while to adjust."

(A whitewashed truth, stripped of fear and nightmares and the feeling of encroaching walls, but the truth nonetheless.)

He nods slowly and says, "Ah." Like it solves a few mysteries. (Like he was wondering but too polite to ask.) "Is there anything I can do?" he asks.

"You can make the salad?"

It's not what he means (and they both know it), but he smiles and nods. "Of course."

She moves over to the coffee table and places her (now lukewarm) cup of water onto a coaster. She tucks _Anne of Green Gables_ back up onto the arm of the couch and gestures to the table. "You can leave your box here, if you want."

"I was planning on giving it to you, actually." The corner of his mouth twitches up and he sweeps the box out from under his arm, balancing it on one palm and holding it out to her, arm outstretched. "Here," and his voice is so quiet she can barely hear it across the few feet separating them, "If you'll have it."

"You know," she says, plucking the box from his arm after a brief hesitation, "you don't have to keep giving me things." (A hospital room, a library, a picnic lunch, a business contract.) She finds her free hand at her throat, tracing the braid of her gold-straw necklace, metal warmed by her body.

"I know. But I want to."

"Well, then I accept, of course." She clutches the box close. (It's light, like an offering of air and tissue paper, and tied with a single navy ribbon.) She dips a minute curtsey, and then slides the ribbon from the length of the box. Carefully, slowly, she lifts the lid.

And then snaps it shut.

"Thank you," she says, before she even realizes she's speaking. Her fingers begin to tremble, and she balls her hand into a fist to keep steady. "That's very thoughtful of you."

His brows crease, eyes flicking from the box up to her face (which must look like a wreck, for him to be so quiet and so still). He takes a single step forward. "Is something the matter?"

"No, of course not. It's lovely." She takes a steadying breath and opens the box again, trying not to stare at the object inside as she lowers it carefully onto the coffee table beside the glass of water. Trying not to catch her eyes on the single stem (thorns carefully clipped) or drag her gaze over the blood red petals (not yet open, but already on the path to decay because nothing lives forever).

A single rose.

And the sight of it threatens to shatter her like glass.

"I'll put it in a vase after dinner," she says. (She's a terrible liar, and he doesn't need false reasons and fake smiles, but she can hardly seem to give him anything else.)

He stares at her, and his face reflects the horror that twists her gut (and she's not doing a very good job of hiding her fear). He doesn't understand. Confusion and regret and concern all etched in the lines of his face, cloaked in the swirling darkness of his eyes.

She turns away without looking at him, (or the rose), and he follows her wordlessly into the kitchen.

She pulls the bowl of spinach and a container of vinaigrette from the fridge, then a package of almonds and dried cranberries from a cupboard, and a set of salad tongs from the drawer. She preheats the oven and begins to set the table while he moves to mix the salad (but the kitchen is narrow and they're too close, crammed too tightly together, and she can see the lines of tension in his back by the way his suit jacket creases, and she has to brush past him every time she needs a plate or a bowl or a spoon).

They work in silence for a long while, and when the oven is finished preheating, and the table is set, and the salad is finished and the wine is poured, she musters up the courage to speak.

"I'm sorry about—all that," she says. He doesn't ask, doesn't pry, but he sadness of his eyes weighs heavily on her shoulders, and the thin line of his mouth stings like a slap. She glances to the timer on the oven and watches the minutes begin their countdown from ten. "I don't like roses."

Rum picks a piece of spinach off the counter and drops it into the compost beneath the sink. The timer flicks down to nine.

"When I was in the basement," she finally says, (and 'the basement' sounds so much kinder than 'the asylum'), "Regina used to check up on me. She'd bring roses to the nurse. Every year, to mark the anniversary of when I was locked up, she'd bring roses for me too."

At the beginning, the flower was a welcome change. Brilliant red in a world of blue and grey, a touch of outside that reminded her of sunshine (she'd never seen) dappled against pavement stones, and a cool ocean breeze (she'd never heard) playing in the leaves of the trees, and freshly cut grass (she'd never smelled) on her father's front lawn (because her entire life was caught up in concrete and dripping overhead pipes and there was nowhere else but _here_).

For a few short days, the rose was beautiful.

"Each year, I would tear a strip of cloth from my gown, soak it in water, and wrap it around the stem to keep the rose fresh as long as possible." She stares at the timer on the oven, only perfunctorily aware of how much her voice wavers, and how tightly she wrings the bottom of her cardigan between her fists. "But it would eventually die," she says quietly, "as everything does… and they would leave it. For a very, very long time."

For weeks. Maybe months. Until it was unrecognizable and black. Until it withered and died and festered – a pile of petals and a rotting stem in the corner, attracting flies, oozing a sickly-sweet-sour smell. (Until, after innumerable years, the sight of a fresh rose turned her stomach because it meant another year passed in a dank basement—because she'd learned that a rose was only black rot after all, given enough time.)

Perhaps she should offer him more information, attempt to express the horror gnawing in her chest, the years of watching any hope of escape wither away in the corner of her musty cell… but perhaps he understands already, because he looks at her with an aching expression and granite-edged eyes. (And she can see anger building behind the regret, tension in the stillness of his hands, the curl of his lip that bears his teeth.)

But when he speaks, his voice is soft. "I didn't know," he says, so quietly she can hardly hear him over the sound of the fan above the oven. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she says.

He grabs his cane off the chair and makes a move towards the living room. "I'll get rid of it."

She should let him, but she can't run from roses forever.( And making him dispose of it feels like she's blaming him, like it's somehow his responsibility—and it's not.) The pie is nearly cooked, and the rose is out of sight, and she's trying to work through her problems. And she'll be _fine_. She reaches out to brush her hand over his jacket sleeve as he passes her, and when he looks (startled, like she came out of nowhere and ambushed him), she shakes her head.

"I'll take care of it later," she says. She curls her fingers tighter against his arm. "Stay, please."

He does.

When she takes the pie out of the oven, he helps her slice it into equal sixths. He pours white wine and she serves him salad, and the silence between them settles comfortably (except he can't quite meet her eyes, and she has to force a smile over the mask of her exhaustion). They look at the table and she praises the salad, and he praises the pie (and perhaps it's better that he glances more at the rose-infested living room than at her, because when he finally looks up from his plate, she feels like a stranger beneath his gaze).

She bears the scrutiny as long as she can.

Finally (and maybe because she's too tired, because her patience and self -control and bravery are all worn down to the nail beds), she sets her cutlery on the side of her plate and wipes her mouth with a paper napkin. She looks away from him, and stares at the floral tablecloth. "Are you always going to be like this?" she asks quietly. It's a sigh as much as a question. She doesn't entirely expect him to answer.

"Like what?"

She stares at the food on her plate and folds her hands on her lap. "Sad."

(Sad is an inadequate word. She's read dozens of books, maybe hundreds. She could have said sorrow, or misery or grief, or flipped through the dictionary-pages of her mind to find something better suited to describe the magnitude of anguish he tries to desperately to hide. But she chooses sad, because she's tired, and because it's easy, and… because it's true.)

At the accusation, he shifts in his chair. His eyes flick towards her when she looks up, intent and precise, and he takes a sip of wine. Long fingers curl neatly around the glass, giving the illusion of perfect control.

Jane meets his eyes. She doesn't flinch.

He might deny it, but he _is_ grieving still. She can see it. A fog settles over his entire manner on days like this (on days where they aren't laughing or eating ice cream cones at Granny's). He pines after Belle like he's lost his favourite cane. He can straighten his shoulders and straighten his back, but he can't hide the limp. Can't hide the tightness in his mouth as he grasps at counters or the backs of chairs, holding onto anything and everything just to stay upright. Can't hide the misery in his eyes, as he stares at her and wishes she was someone he could lean on, just the same.

"You are allowed to miss her, you know," she says quietly.

"Thank you for that." He tilts his head and flashes a sudden smirk that feels like the crack of a whip. "But I don't need your permission."

She could be angry. (Because she's not Belle and he can't keep expecting that she'll magically return, he can't keep staring at her like she's some sort of obituary.) She could get to her feet and throw her napkin onto her plate and point at the door and get him _out _(leave him, like she left her father). She could be hurt, because his eyes are hard and his words are sharp and he's hiding from her, tucking himself beneath layers of pride to hide the wounds in his chest. She could turn away.

But she doesn't—because harsh words don't stick when he's been so patient with her for endless long months, when he's given her freedom and a library and a necklace spun from gold. So she takes a calculated sip of wine to match his, and presses her lips together.

He blinks. Heaves a short sigh. His fingers curl against the tabletop and he sets his wineglass down.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"Don't apologize."

"I didn't mean to snap."

"Yes, you did."

"Well, I shouldn't have."

She shrugs.

"It's… not always easy," he says.

"I know." She looks down at her lap. She bites her lip gently and brushes a crumb from her skirt. "I miss her too, and I didn't even know her."

"She was a lovely woman," he says.

"I get that impression." She looks up.

His lips twitch up at the corners. "She reminds me a lot of you, actually."

She's not sure if it's meant to be a joke, but she laughs anyway, smiling despite herself and shaking her head. "I get that impression, too." (She feels like a consolation prize.)

He takes a heavy breath and lays his hand on the table, sliding it incrementally towards her. She doesn't offer her hands, and he doesn't move to take them. He just sits there, looking out of place and uncomfortable. He stares at her face, and she stares at his hand.

"I miss Belle," he says. It sounds like an admission. A confession. (Guilt.) "Maybe I always will."

She rubs her shoulder, palm against the flawless skin that should be a bullet hole.

His fingers twitch, she can see tension his knuckles. "But that doesn't mean I don't care for you too."

She forces a smile that twists at her lips but falls short of her eyes. "I know you do," she says.

"Do you?" His fingernails turn white where he presses down against the wooden table.

"Yes," she says.

"Jane." (His voice sounds like a plea.) "There's more to a person than their past."

Her gaze snaps to his face.

"And certainly, names are important," his lips twist up, ever so slightly, like he's just said something terrifically ironic, "but that isn't why I care about you. I love you," he says, pressing his lips together before continuing, sounding out the words like he's speaking a foreign language, "Jane French, in the present. Right now."

She stares at him.

He loves her. (And she knows he loves her, she's known for days, so she doesn't know why it's such a shock, or why the ground feels like it's dropping away from under her chair, or why she can't find any words amidst the tumbleweed of her thoughts.)

"Why?" she asks. "Why me?" For a long moment, he doesn't answer. She thinks he didn't hear (but his eyes are tight and his hand twitches again, and he looks just as startled as she feels).

"What—do you mean?" he asks, turning his hand palm-up and spreading his fingers like a localized shrug.

"I mean what I said. You say you love me. I want to know why."

(She wants to know if he loves Belle, if he feels obligated to her because he blames himself, if he loves her because she's the only one not running in fear from his magic and the glint of danger in the back of his gaze.)

"Because when I look at you," he says, "I see someone worth loving. Compassionate, inquisitive, generous. So very, very brave." An echo from a long-ago table in a now-familiar diner, when he was a stranger and she was so very alone. (And maybe things haven't changed much, because he still thinks she's brave and she still wonders if he's mistaken.)

"You make me sound like some sort of hero," she says.

"And who's to say you aren't?"

She shrugs. Stares at the hand he still holds out, ad her own hands folded neatly on her lap.

"I'm broken," she says.

"Chipped, maybe," he says, with a wry twist of his lips. "But hardly broken."

"You sound convinced."

"I'm something of an expert in these matters."

She smiles (and she can hardly see him through vision-blurring tears, because he sounds so hopeful and she wishes she could see herself through his eyes).

"You're the woman I love, Miss French. Since longer than you can remember. I doubt I could stop now, even if I wanted to."

She doesn't speak, but she reaches her hand up onto the table and laces his fingers with his.

(It's not a particularly heroic response, but from the way he smiles, she thinks it might just be enough.)

xxxx

They finish dinner in near silence, but comfortably, with small smiles and furtive touches and second helpings of chicken pot pie. He clears the dishes for her (despite protest that he is the guest, and she is the hostess), and she pulls a tub of vanilla ice cream from the freezer, and a box of cones from the cupboard, and asks him if he wants one scoop or two.

When they finish, she manages to keep him from the dishes (because it's only ten and, like the Robert Frost poem, she has miles to go before she sleeps). He takes his cane and his jacket from the back of the chair, and she walks him to the door. They skirt through the living room and down the stairs, through the quiet darkness of the library and out to the double-front doors.

They stand in silence, in the pale moonlight and pale streetlamp glow.

"I'll see you on Saturday," he says, finally, breaking the silence.

It's Wednesday night already, but the weekend seems suddenly distant.

"I hope so," she says.

He lingers by the door for what seems like an eternity, a _War and Peace_ moment that stretches out far longer than it should. He doesn't want to go. (She doesn't want him to go.) She folds her hands over his (which are in turn folded over his cane, shifting and adjusting over the golden handle, only quiet when the pressure of her palms forces them still). They both wait for something.

She discovers what they're missing, and moves to fix it before she entirely recognizes the implications.

Very slowly, she reaches up to push a strand of hair from his face. (He leans into her touch.) She grasps at his lapels to keep herself steady, and pushes herself up onto tiptoes, and presses her lips to the extreme corner of his mouth. (He smiles, and she can feel the twitch of his skin under her mouth, the percussion of his heartbeat thudding through his jacket.)

"Thank you for coming," she says.

"My pleasure," he says.

Their voices sound loud in the empty lobby. She bites her lip and looks at the floor.

He raises a hand slowly (like it belongs on her cheek), but turns to push open the door instead. Cool night air wraps around her. The sound of crickets interrupt the silence.

"Goodnight," he says.

"Goodnight."

She locks the door and walks upstairs. She takes the steps slowly, (because she does not want to look at the coffee table, does not want to think about the rose lying lifeless in a cardboard coffin, does not want to face the empty apartment alone). But she can still smell his cologne and his hands are still warm from his jacket lapels, and maybe she'll be able to sleep if she attempts to read _Anne of Green Gables_ just one more time.

After washing the dishes, she braves the living room to gather her book from the coffee table.

She tries to keep her gaze straight, focused on the paperback, away from the flowers and the memories and her too-tired fears. But she can't. Instinctively drawn to the white of the box, the corner of her vision catches a flash of unexpected colour.

She stares into the box, and places a hand to her mouth.

A bouquet bound with yellow ribbon, a healthy bunch of flowers, instead of a single stem. Yellow star-shaped pistils and tiny clustered petals. A colour like the cool breeze, like the summer sky and open seas.

The floral, earthy scent of the outdoors, and the purple smell of magic.

(Forget-Me-Nots.)

She slips the bouquet into a crystal vase on the kitchen table, and learns to bake peach cobbler until the sun rises.

* * *

**A/N**: Sorry this is so late! I have no excuses. Actually, not true - I have tons of excuses, but you all probably don't want to hear about them, so I'll spare you. the short version is work, more work, lots of work, change in work schedule, and also continuing adventures of coming down ill. Also, a ball hockey tournament. ANYWAY. thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed this chap and hope you'll continue to enjoy the ones in the future.

Just giving a bit of preemptive warning, I WILL be going on a scheduled hiatus after chapter 16. That'll be the end of part one of the story, so I'm going to take a hiatus to 1: give myself a break and write some different things and 2: write a bunch of chapters up ahead of time, so I don't go on accidental hiatus, like I have the last few weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to post a chap a week consistently, if I take the break on purpose. Soyeah. Thanks for all the support, and I will reply soon! (Another reason for the hiatus. haha.)

Message me if you have any questions or comments and I'll do my best to reply. :)

_ALSO,_ midstorm on tumblr made me a lovely cover for the story. It's gorgeous and you should definitely check it out. post/53729269585/forget-me-not-by-roberre-you-care d-for-me-she


	15. Chapter 15

Jane sips her tea and stares across the couch at Leroy who slouches in his seat (and looks like he wishes his tea was something else).

They've skipped small talk, because Leroy hates it and she finds it tedious (unless she's with Rum). Instead, they've eased into the conversation by way of banana bread she baked at 3 AM—and since they've polished off half the plate, it seems safe to ease into conversation.

"Do you think it's too early?" she finally asks, swirling her tea around in her mug and watching it spiral.

"Never," he says, snatching another slice of banana bread from the plate. He breaks it in half and sets half of it on his knee, and dunks the other half into his tea before eating it.

She watches him for a moment, warming her hands against the heat of her mug, and then asks, "Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"Nope."

"Then… what were _you_ talking about?"

Leroy looks up, mouth twisting into something half-smile and half-smirk. "Scotch."

She grins, and tries to hide behind her mug (but the aromatic steam drifts over her face and tickles her nose, and she's sure he can see the amusement in her eyes, if not in the set of her mouth).

"Don't suppose you got any."

"Sorry, Leroy." She manages to quell her smile and take a sip of tea. She lowers the cup onto the arm of the couch and gives a little shrug.

"Too bad," he says. "Makes this kind of conversation go down a lot easier." As if to demonstrate, he knocks back his tea, and sets the mug on the coffee table. She gestures to the pot, covered in a knitted tea cozy Granny had sent along as a 'moving in' gift, but he holds up his hand to wave away her offer. Instead, he picks up the half piece of banana bread still balancing on his knee.

She watches him eat (and he looks oddly expectant as he does, watching her back with eyebrows raised as he chews). She sips her tea, and he finally swallows. He picks up another piece of bread (he's eaten a lot, but it's good bread, and that's what she made it for) and then settles back into his seat, shifting sideways so he can speak to her face-to-face along the length of the couch.

"So," he says, "you wanna swing that one by me again?"

She does. But it had taken almost half an hour of not-small talk to build up to her question the first time around. And she wants to know, but she doesn't want to ask again, (because the moment has turned into something light and frothy, with jokes of Scotch and hidden smiles, and if she asks she'll only stir it into something thicker). Her bravery feels as deflated as a failed soufflé (she hasn't made one yet, but she's sure she will and she's sure it will fail at least a couple of times), and so she takes a sip of tea and gives Leroy a shrug.

"Nevermind," she says. "It's not really important."

"Then why'd you bring it up?"

"I—" She trails off and bites her lip.

He shrugs. "Suit yourself, sister. I'm ain't gonna pry where I'm not wanted…" He pauses, grins at her. "…but you're a terrible liar. You know that, right?"

"I haven't had much practice," she says.

"Well, if you're gonna tell me, do yourself a favour and quit stallin'. If you're not… well, it doesn't make much difference to me. It's your life."

She knows he'll drop the subject if she asks—he won't pry—but she hasn't chosen _not_ to ask him yet, and she he chews his banana bread with expectantly raised eyebrows and an impatient stare.

She sighs, and hides half her face behind her mug. "Relationships." She says it like a weight off her back, because it's an admission more than a statement. A burden she's revealing to the bald and bearded man across the couch from her. "I want to know if it's too soon to be thinking about a relationship."

His eyebrows shoot up to the middle of his forehead (and if he hadn't whipped his hat from his head the moment he walked in the door, she imagines they'd disappear under the brim). "Woah, you sure you want to be asking me this?"

She purses her lips and looks at the ground, heat rising up her neck. "See, this is why I didn't want to tell you— I knew you'd react like this and—"

"Hey, sister, I ain't reacting like anything. I just don't think I'm the one to talk to. Good looks aside, I'm not exactly Casanova over here."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," she says, reaching out to give the cushion beside him a tentative, comforting pat. (She doesn't quite reach him, it's not quite a touch, but it's as close as she can manage and he seems to respect her attempt.) "I think you're lovely."

"Yeah, well, you just asked me about dating Gold. You're in a pretty steep minority."

She shrugs. "That doesn't mean I'm wrong."

He practically shoves the slice of banana bread into his mouth (and if he's trying to keep her from noticing the way a blush creeps up his neck, over his face, and all the way to the top of his gleaming head—it doesn't work). He swallows with some difficulty. Brushes a couple crumbs from his grey plaid shirt, he clears his throat and says, "Quit changing the subject. We were talking about you and… Gold." The way he pauses does not entirely inspire confidence, but he's not laughing and he's not leaving and he's not telling her what to do, so she can deal with it.

"You don't like him," she says.

"Not many people do."

She can feel her expression slipping, sliding into careful neutrality. She pulls her hand back to her mug and takes a sip (her tea is nearly done, growing cold and running low).

"But hey," he says, and he smiles enough to take the edge off his former words (to blunt the truth just a little), "this ain't about me. _You _obviously like him." He smiles (a little lopsidedly) at her until she smiles back. "Tell me why."

"Well, he's—he's—uh—" And it feels a bit strange to be talking about Rum (because he's so private, and so aloof from the town sometimes), but Leroy watches her without pressuring and she knows he'll tell the truth (because he was one of the first, Leroy and Whale and Rum and Emma) and before she knows it her stuttering attempts knock loose a stream of words she can't contain.

"He's been very kind with me. And patient. Understanding. And sweet. We obviously cared for one another… before… but he's never pushed. He's been a gentleman. And he's been honest with me, and he _tries_, he tries so hard to pretend like he's not heartbroken, but I know he is, and he still helps me anyways even though I'm sure he needs help just as badly. He's very lonely, I think. Sometimes I can't tell, there are a lot of layers to him and—" She stops, drains the rest of her tea, and sets her mug on the table. She runs her hands along her skirt to smooth the fabric over her knees. "And I think he really loves me."

"Well… yeah."

This is not the response she has been expecting.

"Yeah?" she repeats.

"Yeah. He loves you. Anyone with eyes can see that." He says it like it's so obvious (and she thinks maybe it has been, from the first day she saw him, shattered and trembling on rain slicked asphalt, dangerous and vengeful over the loss of _Belle_).

"They can?" she asks again.

"Jane," Leroy says (and he says it like 'sister', with a shake of his head and a crooked-mouth smile), "the man ate _ice cream_ with you. In public. He gave you a library. It ain't rocket science."

She fights down a smile, but can't keep the heat from rising in her cheeks.

"Look," he says, "I'm not going to tell you there aren't risks. I mean, you'll be dating Mister Gold." She gives him a look and he holds up his hands (but she can't be angry because he probably does have a point). "But someone once told me that love is the most wonderful and amazing thing in the world. Love is hope. And if you're in love… well, you'd better enjoy it while it lasts." He looks at her and gives a shrug that disguises the earnestness of his words. "That's a paraphrase, by the way."

"How do I—" she pauses, biting down gently on her lower lip and pushing a lock of hair from her face. "How do I know if I love _him_?"

"Sister," Leroy says, and he's shaking his head again, like he can't believe what he's about to say, "you called him sweet. You're in love."

She wants to say more (ask a million questions, voice a million concerns, because how can she be in a relationship when she barely knows who Jane French is, and when he still may be in love with a woman who vanished months ago) but Leroy looks pleased, and she can't stop thinking about the bouquet of forget-me-nots in the vase on the kitchen counter. And maybe her concerns are real… or maybe she's just afraid to try. (To hope.)

"Thanks, Leroy," she says.

He nods. And then yawns, covering his mouth with one hand and stretching his other arm out into the air above his head. "Well," he says, when he gains control of the yawn and snaps his mouth shut with a click of teeth, "I'm on nights again."

They both stand, and she fights a losing battle against the contagious yawn. She covers her face in both hands and spectacularly fails at keeping her jaw locked against it.

"I'd better get some sleep," he says. "And by the looks of things, so should you."

She offers what she hopes is a reassuring smile. "Right now that's a bit easier said than done, I'm afraid."

He shrugs. "Maybe you _should_ invest in some scotch. I got an extra bottle you can have, long as you promise to share."

"That's very generous of you," she says (and it is, because Leroy will drink it far more than she, and she's seen the price tags on the bottles in the store). "But I'm going down to the hospital later today to pick something up, so I think I'll be okay."

"Suit yourself." She walks him to the door, and he picks up his vest and his grey woolen cap. "I'm just saying it'd go down a lot easier than a couple of horse pills, that's all."

xxxx

"Doctor Whale?"

His office door is slightly ajar, and it swings inward at her quiet knock. She pokes her head around stares into the cluttered interior. A figure dressed in white and blue-green scrubs stands in the corner of the office, back to the door and head bowed. She knocks again. "Viktor?"

This time, he looks up at the name. When he turns around, he holds a medical file open in his arms, a match to the dozen or so folders spread out over his desk. He looks momentarily startled to see her, but then his face smoothes into an easy smile and he snaps the file shut. (It says 'Belle French' with the 'Belle' crossed out and replaced with 'Jane', and she finds it unsettling to see her name staring back at her.)

"What can I do for you?" he asks. He flips the rest of the files closed and gathers them into a stack on the corner of the desk.

"I know you don't usually work Thursdays, but Wanda at reception said you were in today…"

"Just catching up on some long overdue paperwork," he says.

"Yeah, she mentioned that. She also said 'it's about time'."

He smiles at the jab. She smiles at his smile.

"So…" he spreads his hands, "… how can I help you?"

She finds it difficult to speak—more difficult than she had expected—more difficult than she'd expected considering this is _Doctor Whale_, who has helped her through so many things (and it's not like he's never given her sleeping pills before). But it feels like failure to come crawling back after only a week alone (even though she knows there's no failure in asking for help). And so she clears her throat and bites her lip (and watches his face change subtly as his eyebrows raise in expectation and then lower at her delay).

"I've been having trouble sleeping," she says.

Whale's mouth tightens, and he nods. He raises his hand to his chin and taps a finger against his lip. "What kind of trouble are we talking about?"

"The 'I can't sleep' kind of trouble. The new place is nice," she says quietly, easing herself into relevant information, "but it's so quiet at night. I'm the only one there, all the shops are closed, there are no cars… and I tend to get nightmares. Knowing I'll wake up terrified makes it difficult to fall asleep."

"What do you dream about?"

"Lots of things. Sometimes it's about the asylum, or the night on the road."

He nods, encouraging her to continue.

She gives a half-shrug and crosses her arms over her clutch purse, pressing it to her chest. "A gun. Yelling. I get shot. Often it's all mixed together. But it's always dark, and I'm always alone, and that's the worst part."

"Alone? Mister Gold isn't with you?" Whale looks distinctly surprised. His brow creases and he tilts his head slightly.

"No," she says, startled. "Is that what everyone thinks? No, we're not—we're not together. We're just…" She pauses, shifts her gaze to the ground for a second before answering. "…I don't know what we are."

"I thought he was your 'True Love'."

She laughs at the awkwardness in his tone (and it must be as uncomfortable for him as it was for Leroy, to think of Mister Gold in love). "Well, I don't know if I'd say _that_. It's a bit early to tell. But I can assure you he's been a perfect gentleman."

Whale looks momentarily skeptical (a flash of something like irritation in his eyes, for the briefest of seconds, and then covered behind kindness and concern). He gives a short shrug. "Well, I can prescribe you something that might help you sleep, but I'm not sure it will do much for the nightmares."

"What will?"

"Time." It's not the answer she wanted. But at least he's not giving her false hope. "In the short term, it may help to find a roommate, for your own peace of mind."

A roommate. Where is she going to find a roommate. (She doesn't even want a roommate.) Everyone she knows lives quite comfortable without her tagging along. Ruby's busy learning to manage the inn and the diner, Emma barely has enough room to breathe in that tiny loft, with Mary Margaret and David and Henry all crammed into a single space, and she is _not_ moving in with Leroy. She supposes Mister Gold has spare rooms in his house... but she has a library to run, and she does not need a nanny.

Whale must notice her reluctance, because he gives her a warming smile and holds his hand out, palm up, and says, "There may be a second option."

"What is it?"

"You won't like it."

"I don't like nightmares, either."

"I've been talking to Doctor Hopper, and he suggested using a desensitization method."

"I'm… not sure what you mean."

"It means exposing you to something you fear, in a controlled environment, where we can replace the negative feelings with positive ones over time. Give you a good experience to lessen the fear, to show you there's nothing to be afraid of."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Doctor Hopper and I thought it might be beneficial if you visited the line again."

She tightens her arms over her clutch purse, and the corners of the little bag bite into her stomach and chest. She looks at the floor.

"It's not as frightening as you think," Whale says. "I'll go with you. We'll take things very slowly. I won't let anything bad happen to you."

(Dark pavement slick with rain, reflecting headlights and fireballs and anger and she doesn't remember seeing the muzzle flash of a gun but she knows the street would reflect that too.)

"I don't think that's a good idea," she says.

"We'll give it a positive association," he says. "It's classical conditioning. It will be less frightening each time you go."

(Everyone yells and everything yells and _she_ yells because she doesn't know where she is, and her shoulder hurts, and there are so many faces she's never seen – including her own reflection in the dark glass of a police car window.)

"I'm not sure," she says. She forces a smile and tries to expel her nervous energy, (but being back in the hospital isn't helping, back with antiseptic and white lab coats and the smell of dead roses in the back of her mind). She doesn't want to deal with all this. Not right now. Not with the library opening coming up. Not when she's so tired.

"It'll be good for you, Belle. It'll bring closure."

She blinks. A lead brick settles into her stomach and she stares at him.

(_Belle_.)

The name hangs between them for the briefest of seconds, like the afterimage of lightning just before the thunder.

"I'm not Belle," she says, so quietly she can barely hear herself speak.

Whale's brows crease for a moment—searching out his last few words – and then his eyes widen. "Jane," he says quickly. "Jane, of course." He rubs his jaw, shakes his head with a look of consternation. "Sorry," he says. "Long day. You know how it is."

She does know. (That's why she's here.) So she nods, smiles, shrugs a shoulder.

"About the line, Jane…" and he says her name with a smile, like a peace offering, a lure to bring her back on the topic she wants very much to avoid, "…it _will_ be good for you."

"I'm not sure."

"Trust me."

She's not sure. (She's really, really, truly not sure, in the deepest sense where the very thought of it sends waves of chills curling around her spine.) But she does trust him.

"When?" she asks.

"Excellent," he says, and he claps his hands together. (She's his favourite amnesia patient, after all.) He gathers his files from his desk and opens a filing cabinet, sliding them inside. "It just so happens I'm free right now. Just let me tidy up. I'll drive."

She says it sounds good (although it sounds pretty far from 'good'), and waits for Whale outside while he cleans and changes into civilian clothes. He exits a moment later, wearing a lavender shirt and a black tie, with a black blazer slung over his shoulder. Car keys clutched firmly in hand.

And so she holds onto her bravery and her most winning smile, and follows Whale out to the parking lot so she can change her life.

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks everyone for reading and reviewing! Just so you know, I will be going on hiatus after the next chap. It won't be terribly long, and I will still be posting various oneshots and such (mostly on tumblr), but I just need the time so I can write up more chapters for you and get back to my once a week schedule. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully it'll make the reading experience better in the long run! (I will also use the hiatus to reply to reviews. xD FINALLY.)

Also, I was both slow and impatient this week. Slow, because I JUST finished the chapter today, and impatient because now I'm posting it without sending it off to be beta'd by my magnificent friend AntiKryptonite. So if there are tons of mistakes, it's totally my fault and hopefully one day I'll learn to be patient and on time. Thanks to Beeinyourbonnet and Clockwork-Mockingbird for giving the chap a once-over to catch my typos and make sure it wasn't utterly horrible.

Thanks again everyone!


	16. Chapter 16

Loose stones crunch beneath the tires of Viktor's silver Camry as he pulls onto the side of the road.

Orange spray paint slashes across the black asphalt, and she's glad it's sunny (because the darkness and the rain bring bullets and screaming), but part of her wishes it was dark (because at least then she could hide from Whale's patient, prying eyes).

"Are you ready?" he asks.

(No. Absolutely not. Not remotely.)

"Yes," she says.

"It'll help." Whale taps his fingers on the steering wheel and looks at her (like he wants to put his hand on her arm, like she's his friend and a glorified psychological experiment all at once). "Trust me."

"You said that already."

"And it's still true."

He gives her a smile, and she gives one back (though his is eager and hers is a wobbly-lipped, uncertain kind of smile).

"Alright," he says, as if the matter is settled. "I'll wait for you outside."

She follows a moment later (because the Camry is small, and her seatbelt is tight, and—even with the windows open—she can feel the walls press in around her). She can't sit here forever, and even an asphalt nightmare is better than a slow strangulation.

He slides on a pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket, and together they walk towards the line.

Five paces. Ten paces.

"So this is where it happened?" Whale asks.

She doesn't know exactly where. (She doesn't remember the precise square metres of pavement where she lay, and the rain has long since erased any traces of her blood.) All the asphalt looks the same, dry and unthreatening in the high afternoon sun. "Yeah," she says.

"Does it still frighten you?"

She shrugs. The road is cracked and gravelly and just like every other road, but her mouth is dry and her palms are damp, so she nods. "Yeah."

"Tell me what you remember."

She already has (at least, she thinks she has), but talking is better than silence and so she begins with the beginning.

"I fell forward," she says, "into a man's chest. That's the first thing I remember. He grabbed my arms so tightly that he bruised me when he tried to hold me up. We landed on the pavement. My shoulder hurt. The stones cut into my palms."

He nods encouragingly and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. (She flinches, but neither of them pull away.)

She pieces together fragments of broken sentences in a feeble attempt to describe the disorientation of being born into chaos, of screaming and pain. A burst of purple magic and a fireball. (She'd left that part out of the story before, but Whale doesn't look surprised so he must know.) She talks of the pirate, the sheriff, the long ride back to the hospital with a wound that didn't hurt and didn't bleed and a mind filled with fragments of nothing but the asylum and rain. The terror that hasn't left. The terror that eats at the back of her mind every day, forcing her to fill her mind with happiness and her address book with friends and stay up all night baking chicken pot pie and banana bread instead of sleeping. Eventually, her words run dry.

In the silence that settles between them, the sound of tires crunching gravel crackles through the air like radio static.

A black car pulls up to the line… from the other side.

She stares at it. The tinted windows obscure the face within. "Who is that? Is that Doctor Hopper?" (She doesn't entirely believe it is.)

"If I told you, it would ruin the surprise."

"Viktor please," she says, smiling nervously to disguise up a sudden spike of panic, "what's going on?"

"It's alright, Jane. Nothing to worry about." His voice sounds cold and disinterested and his hand on her shoulder weighs as much as Atlas's globe.

The car door opens. A woman steps out. (It's impossible not to recognize her. Not to recognize the red lips and the dark hair, the expression of harshest amusement and eyes as black as the blouse she wears.)

Regina Mills crosses the line into Storybrooke with her hands tucked into the pockets of her slacks, and smiles. "Hello, Miss French."

For a moment, all Jane can do is stare. The air seems too thin (like the articles she's read in _National Geographic_ about Everest or the Chilean mountains), as if the oxygen levels are too low and slowly starving out her brain. She swallows hard and takes a deep breath that leaves her head spinning. She tries to pull away, but Whale's hand tightens on her shoulder.

"What do you want?" She stares at Regina, turns to Whale. "What's going on? Why are you doing this?"

"My my, you ask a lot of questions." Whale smiles, thin-lipped. Something glints in his eyes. "Come with us, and we might even answer some of them."

She flinches away. His fingers find a tighter grip by digging into the muscle between her shoulder and her neck.

"No," she says.

Regina pulls her hands from her pockets. "Unfortunately for you, that wasn't a suggestion." (Jane has only heard her voice through steel doors and in nightmares, but she doesn't think she'll ever forget the way it sounds.) A flick of Regina's wrist (accompanied by splayed fingers and a cruel smile) and Jane's legs snap together. Invisible shackles curl around her wrist, pinning her arms to her side. A part of her wants to run, but another part of her knows this feeling, knows the futility (knows that there's nothing left to do but bide her time until an opportunity arises). She struggles, but Regina's magic lifts her off the ground until the toes of her nude pumps scuff against the pavement, and so she settles on glaring as menacingly as possible through the tears that sting her eyes.

Regina and Whale approach the line, dragging Jane behind them. Every few feet she tests the bonds, wiggles a little, but they don't give (and she earns herself an invisible cuff to the side of her head that leaves her ears ringing).

Regina stops just before the line. She lowers her hand slowly, and Jane's feet touch pavement. Whale, however, does not stop. He doesn't even break stride. He merely steps over the line and… shifts.

It happens instantaneously, as though Whale falls away (like a cast off cloak or a discarded newspaper) and a woman finishes his step. Inches of height vanish in the blink of an eye, curves impose and mannerisms alter. Blonde hair turns red.

The woman spins on her heels; her face is dominated by piercing black eyes and a smile that could chill the surface of the sun. Jane has no doubts as to the identity of this woman.

It's a nightmare. (It's real.)

She's asleep. (She's awake.)

"Cora," Jane says, barely able to hear her own voice over the sound of her thudding heart.

Cora folds her arms over her chest (red camisole peeking from beneath black blazer) and widens her smile.

Jane glances between Cora and Regina (and the resemblance between them is striking, despite Regina's dark hair). "What do you want with me?"

Cora laughs airily and tilts her head in a way that makes Jane feel like a child. "Oh, my dear, what makes you think we want anything with _you_?"

"Well," she says, effecting confidence despite the quaver in her voice, "you are kidnapping me."

Cora's mild surprise (expressed in a single raised eyebrow and a few superfluous blinks) shifts into a more predatory expression. "Yes," she says. "We are."

Before she has the opportunity to reply, Jane feels strong hands on her shoulder blades. Cora gives a nod to Regina, the invisible shackles release, and Regina pushes Jane across the line.

Nothing happens.

Not the nothing of memory loss (vast empty darkness and swirling confusion), but the nothing of _nothing,_ of no change, of no magic and no pain. Of nothing but a vague sense of shock the settles into anticlimactic numbness. (Heavy breathing and heart pounding and wide eyes looking up into Cora's satisfied face.)

"Fetch her bag," Cora says, looking over Jane's shoulder to talk to Regina. "And hide the car."

Regina goes.

"Rum knows you're here," Jane says. She hopes it sounds menacing. (She hopes it sounds like a threat.) "I'm supposed to meet him for breakfast tomorrow. He'll know I'm gone. He'll come find me."

"I'm counting on it."

Jane says nothing.

Cora continues, shifting her posture and clasping her hands in front of her, using the tone of a queen delivering a formal speech to an audience of peasants. "You see, when two people both want something the other has, a deal can always be struck." She pauses, and then shrugs slightly. "He has something we want… and now we have something he wants."

It's a trap. (Of course it is, of course it's a trap, because a magical dangerous pawnbroker means infinitely more than his amnesiac librarian girlfriend.)

"I'll warn him," Jane says. "I'll find a way. I'll sneak out in the night." She can contact him. Maybe she can get her phone.

"Regina said you were spirited… but not stupid. Try and run, and I'll have my daughter put bullets in both your knees."

"Go ahead," Jane says. Cora looks slightly surprised at Jane's answer. (Which makes sense, since Jane surprised herself.) She doesn't feel brave. Her hands shake and her voice trembles and she feels cold, despite the warmth of the afternoon. "I won't stop fighting."

"Apparently not."

"I'll get away. Or I'll die." (She's not brave, but hope is the only thing she has left, and she wants to spit in this horrid woman's face). "Either way, you'll have nothing."

Cora makes a short 'hmm' of disapproval in the back of her throat.

At the sound of footsteps, Jane turns to see Regina cross the line, carrying Jane's purse tucked under her arm. A second glance reveals no sign of Whale's car in the distance. Likely either hidden or removed by magic.

"Is she always this much trouble?" Cora asks her daughter.

"Not always," Regina says. "But the short answer is 'more or less'."

"A change of tactics, then." She turns back to Jane. "If you escape, _Rum_ might be able to protect you, it's true." She says _Rum_ like it's the punch line to a joke, with derision and a smile. "But he can't protect everyone." It's not a subtle threat. Cora makes it even less subtle by continuing. "If you make our lives difficult, we will return the favour, starting with Doctor Whale and ending with Miss Swan. On the other hand, come along willingly, and we'll have no reason to involve the citizens of Storybrooke."

She should run. Now. She's not tied up and she should run. (There's no magic over the town line—she knows, Rum told her—but they'll snatch her up the moment she steps back over the boundary.) She could take off into the woods, but she has no food and no water and no map, and no way to warn the town.

No way to save Doctor Whale (who called her 'Jane' when 'Belle' was still an open wound). Or Ruby (who gives her iced tea and smiles even when Granny glares at her lunch dates). Or Leroy (who drinks Scotch and everything else in sight, but still has time to talk of love and gentle things). Or Emma (who tells the truth and tries hard to make sense of a senseless world).

Unless she stays. And then (just maybe) she can save them all.

"I accept," she says, "if you promise not to harm them."

"I promise," Cora says, and Jane doesn't believe her in the least.

xxxx

There is only _here_. (There is nothing else because she is here and this is all there is and all there will ever be.)

But she is here because, in some small way, she chose to be here. (Because her friends deserve a chance to live and maybe Belle would do the same thing and maybe Belle would be proud.) And so she carries herself like a princess, like an unbreakable spirit, when they move her from the car to an abandoned cabin far outside Storybrooke. When they chain her to a radiator with only a thin scrap of blanket and a tin of cold soup (and it gets so cold, and when it begins to rain the floor leaks). But she doesn't scream. And she doesn't cry.

She waits.

She is here. (She has always been here.)

But it is temporary. (She will always be here.)

Rum will save her (or she will save herself) and she'll have her chance at life (at love) again, and she'll open the library and live out the rest of her days in a pink house where magic is real and a man with brown eyes and a fireball will guard the front door.

Unless maybe everything was a lie and a figment of her imagination, and maybe she's back in the asylum and maybe she invented Emma and Ruby and Mister Gold (the same way as she imagined that man in the red-dragon coat with the scales and the funny laughter, such a very long long long time ago).

Or maybe this is real.

And if this is real, maybe they've done her a favour.

Because, despite months of learning and living (and love), she didn't know who Jane French truly was.

And now she does.

(Jane French is a hero.)

And Belle (jingle bells and cow bells and the resounding music of church bells from a great cathedral) would be proud.

End of Part One: Blank Slates and Blue Eyes.

* * *

**A/N:** Hey everyone! Thanks so much for reading. Sorry this is a day late—the chapter was giving me a bit of drama. A huge thanks to Bee (beeinyourbonnet on tumblr), Clockwork-Mockingbird, and of course, Anti-Kryptonite for helping me solve the problems. They're the best. You should read their stuff while I am… ON HIATUS! WHOO! –throws confetti-

It's probably less exciting for you, to be honest. But I'm pumped. My to do list includes: writing new chapters of this (so that I have a buffer and don't stress out every time I'm late), rewatching some eps of OUAT (I've seen season two only once through and I really could use a refresher on some of the characters), finishing filling prompts (that I took in April and then never got to finish), working on my next Rumbelle story for when FMN is done, and replying to PMs and reviews! Hopefully I get all that done. It's a pretty ambitious hiatus, but I'm pretty determined. Haha. I honestly don't know exactly how long it will last, but when I DO come back, I'll have the next part of the story (likely 10-15 chapters again) updating every single week. And you'll all be replied to, if you review. Haha.

Anyway, thanks so much. This is the end of part one. Next time we'll begin part two, which is from Emma's POV, and entitled 'Loopholes and Legalities'. I love you all and will see you soon. In the meantime, if you want, you can follow me on tumblr (roberre) or send me messages if you feel like keeping in touch. I'd love to hear from you. THANKS AGAIN.


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